Chapter Text
Act I
She can feel the sole of her boot flopping around against the dirty bedrock ground as she sprints through the streets of Lowtown. It’s almost certainly slowing her down as she runs for her life away from merciless bandits, and it absolutely was a problem when it had caused her to trip into those storage crates at the docks, blowing her cover and beginning this lovely chase.
She’s almost at the market now and she rounds the corner down an alleyway only to smack chest first into a burly human man with a nasty snarl painting his lip. In her peripheral vision she catches the shine of his greatsword reflecting the high afternoon sun.
“Whoops. Fuck. Hey there stranger.”
Maybe he’s not a threat. Sure he’s a head taller than her, missing some teeth, looking down at her like a stain on his shoe-
Okay, so he’s definitely a threat.
She hears more footsteps shuffle in behind her and the husky baritone of Varric’s voice speaks out a warning.
“Hawke…”
“Varric. Welcome!” She attempts to infuse her voice with a bravado that she definitely doesn’t feel. “Meet my new friend here. I didn’t catch your name…”
The man lets out a growl and reaches for the greatsword and Hawke releases a deep sigh of her own as she unsheathes her own daggers and crouches ever so slightly.
The dance of blades begins quickly after and Hawke finds herself wondering, whilst spinning out of sword reach, how her life had gotten here in just a few short months.
More shuffling steps approach and Hawke is grateful for the arrival of her other companions, at least until Carver starts bellowing at her.
“Maker, Liora, what have you done this time?!”
If it wasn’t for the perpetual whine of his voice he would almost sound like her chastising, protective, older brother, but she knows their relationship too well to ever view Carver as anything other than childish and petulant.
“Relax, I’ve just given us some much needed excitement baby brother!”
Hawke dodges a lunge and her assailant trips, giving Hawke the offensive edge to drive into a double slash with her daggers. She cuts into the man’s forearm, creating two bleeding red lines, and lets out a quick laugh of success before diving in again. She aims lower this time, hoping to pierce his abdomen and inhibit him further.
“Hawke!”
Varric’s baritone doesn’t ease her this time; he calls out the same moment she feels it. A rouge appears behind her left shoulder and she breaks her focus. Her blade deviates from its path and follows her eye line upwards. Stupid- so stupid! A foolish rookie move and certain to cost her…
The rouge slices her fleshy side and she screams out in anguish. Hawke notes the glint of the greatsword’s blade flashing downwards towards her chest so she pulls on her mana and sends out a harsh Mind Blast knocking them far away and onto the ground with its strength.
The bandits are disoriented, and it provides her less addle-minded companions an opportunity to strike them down, past the point of retribution.
Her left waist is burning; it feels hot and drenched and she grits her teeth down lest she audibly show her distress. She’s dizzy from the spell. It’s not a difficult spell by any means, she had essentially mastered it by the time she was 15. She’s struck light-headed by the publicness of her action- she had done her best over the past three months to avoid using her magic at any and all costs when outside of her own home.
Hell, she wouldn’t even light Varric’s fireplace at the Hanged Man last week in fear one of the half-drunk Templars downstairs might sense the magic and seek her out. Kirkwall wasn’t a city for risks; that’s what she’d been told.
She stands over the body of the burly man with her knees tightly locked and slightly wobbling. Her stomach feels upside down and her eyes itch with paranoia as they shift all around the empty alley searching for a witness that doesn’t exist.
No one is watching her, aside from her companions, and the alley remains empty while the citizens of Lowtown hurry about their everyday lives without pause.
A weak croaking voice speaks up from underneath her, difficult to make out over all the midday hubbub.
“A dog-lord and a mage. Sounds about right for a bitch like you.”
Hawke waits only a short moment before she sends a Stonefist straight into the man’s jaw. This time she doesn’t check for on-lookers.
The blood from her side begins dripping down to permeate the fabric of her pants and she feels it start to stick against her thigh. She is still dizzy. Maybe it’s from the blood loss, but she only clenches her teeth harder together before swishing around to grace her companions with a tight but winning smile.
“Welp, another one down, plenty more to go. Deep Roads here we come!”
Her companions stand scattered around the alleyway, varying postures with identical wide, worried eyes. She sees Varric start to work that clever tongue of his and she cuts him off before he can begin.
“Everyone in this city is too damn obsessed with themselves to notice what I do.”
“Liora…”
Carver’s voice is a warning, but it sounds nothing like Varric’s from earlier. There is no haste in his tone, just a profound and weary sense of worry. It’s nothing new between them, and it really wasn’t something to solve while bleeding out on a backstreet of Lowtown.
“Yeah, I’m always careful. You know me.”
Her hand waves flippantly towards him. It’s a dismissal in every sense of the word and Carver is rolling his eyes even as he eyes her wound with apprehension.
“I do. That’s the problem.”
Her cut lances with anguish and she thinks maybe it’s better she not deal with her brother’s words right now. They don’t hurt as much as her current injury but they sure as shit aren’t soothing, either.
Varric sidles up to her and lets her put some weight on her shoulder for support. She’s gracious for it in a way that she can’t express at the current moment, but will do her damndest to remember the next time she’s over at his suite for rum and cards.
“Come on, Hawke. Let’s get you down to Blondie. He’ll fix you up.”
She hobbles alongside her best friend and smiles to herself as she limps her way to Darktown with one more job under her belt and two more gold sovereigns towards the expedition. Minus the cost of some new boots.
She reaches her right hand up to hold her wounded side and gently presses in some healing magic, relishing in the freedom of the uninhibited act and the wealth of brand new possibilities.
Act II
“It’s…. It’s a book.”
His tone sounds aggressively dead-pan, even to his own ears. He doesn’t necessarily mean to sound ungrateful, it’s just that her gesture stings as much as it soothes and he’s not quite sure where to place his discordant feelings.
Hawke goes on talking, sweet and sarcastic like usual, but Fenris is too preoccupied to really listen to the words she’s saying. He’s still stuck on the item clenched under his fingers. It’s on the smaller side, moderately thin and bound in dark brown leather that has clearly softened and faded over time. A line of gold letters are embossed on the outer ridge of the book, indecipherable to his eyes. He knows the pages inside contain much of the same.
His lips grow thin and agitated, both from his own ineptitude and from Hawke’s blithe demeanor as she asks him about his familiarity with Shartan.
That hot, shameful, frustration burns deep in his chest again. She must see him as weak- as stupid. She must think him a fool. He has only ever wanted Hawke to see him as a whole man, but how could he expect her to see something that isn’t truly there.
“Of course I know about him. What do you take me for?”
Hawke looks surprised and struck, a harsh difference from the eager woman who had bounced into the room all of half a minute ago.
How quickly his hate could hurt her.
Fenris wishes he could wash that look off her face. He wishes things could be what they were before- when their future was grand and nebulous and ripe with possibilities he hadn’t yet soiled.
He wishes he could be sitting around his mansion with her, drunk on wine with Hawke’s laughter ringing out clear before dying into a full toothed smile curling up into her pinkened cheeks. He wishes they could be lounging in her study side by side, reading this gift. Together.
Just one more thing he will never have. One more thing Danarius took from him.
“I certainly didn’t learn from books, though. Do you think they teach slaves to read?”
His vulnerabilities are ratcheting closer to the surface as Hawke’s eyes grow tedious and tender at the very same time. This is too much for him, he thinks- this mixture of rage and desire. He feels like a warrior possessed and Hawke still looks so casual even though he knows he’s verbally scathing her. Her eyes are both shining and strong and he’s brought back to that fateful night in her bedroom that will forever be branded behind his eyelids and felt lingering on his skin.
“It’s not too late to learn, Fenris.”
Hawke sounds so fucking hopeful, like learning to read is easy . Like the way she feels about him is easy despite him making it more difficult for her at every turn.
“Is that what this is? Let’s teach the poor slave to read!?”
She doesn’t reply.
Fenris really looks at her, he drinks in her demeanor and it goes down his throat like the bottom of the barrel whiskey at The Hanged Man. She’s a contradiction that he wishes he couldn’t see all sides of. She seems just as sure as she is scared and soft and he doesn’t understand why his temper flies out of check whenever she is around.
The thing she offers is the thing he wants . He had just been daring to think it and want it and here she was willing to give it without seemingly a single qualm. She was too benevolent for his malice.
“Ignore me. You are not responsible for my deficiencies. I do appreciate your gift.”
Hawke remains silent and Fenris internally writhes in discomfiture. Years ago, he used to daydream of these moments of silence- moments in which Hawke would finally be quiet and give her optimistic jabber a rest.
He would give anything to hear her ramble right now.
Her cheerful spirit grates on him most days but somewhere past his bitterness he knows that Hawke would never, has never, thought of him as less. Hawke sees his spite and his struggle and she never wavers in her belief that he is more than who he ever thought he could be.
His daydreams of Hawke wordless and weary no longer exist. They have been entirely replaced by the longing of her company, of her assured words, of her stabilizing and driving presence. He wants what he dares to wish for, and if Hawke can think it simple why can’t he?
He thinks of her cheeks flushed and her body relaxed and his body leaning closer, the book abandoned and his lips no longer tight but welcoming…
Venhedis, but he wants .
“I’ve always wanted to learn more of Shartan. Perhaps this is my chance.”
He pours every ounce of optimism he feels in that moment into his words. It’s not much, but it’s what he has to give and he wants to give everything he has to her. He wants to repay her with whatever he can provide and walk into this new endeavor by her side unafraid and unrestricted and daring to hope.
But as much as he dares to hope he dare not tell her yet.
She’s silent only a moment longer and he stomachs it until she gives him an intimate tug of her lips and softly breathes out her final words.
“Perhaps.”
She takes her leave and he’s alone once again in his dark house, wishing and wanting. He waits for the morning, for the first light of day, so he can see her once more and plan his first lesson.
Act III
She pries her boots off in subtle rage and grunts in excess. She’s loudly trudging through the house, not-so-secretly hoping Bodhan or Orana will notice and bestow her with some kindly companionship. Meredith and Orsino had truly enraged her again this afternoon, and she knows that she’s prone to stew in her aggression after moments like these, as the past had so graciously shown her.
After a few prominent door slams Bodhan greets her in the kitchen, slightly short of breath like he has run to meet up with her. Hawke sobers at the notice of this detail; she realizes her frustrations have burdened his shoulders again and she attempts to give him a wan smile.
Bodhan’s eyes shift to her and away- nervous, just like he’s looked for the past week. She hopes it’s nothing more than a reaction to her short temper as of late.
The Hawke Estate is much more quiet these days and in the evenings Liora often finds herself lying tightly wound on her mattress and listening closely for any sort of noise of life. She aches to hear something, anything, to help her feel less alone in this vastness of a city.
Liora has walked through the fade and this almost feels more absent, she thinks.
She’s grateful for Bodhan’s continued presence, and Sandal’s too, of course. They ground her more than she’s able to ground herself these days- maybe more than anyone can. What would she do without them in this home?
She feels tired in a bone deep sort of way- like she’s run herself so thin that she’s transparent.
There’s Meredith tugging on one side of her, waging war against Orsino on the opposite side. At the end of the day Hawke just feels yanked around.
She had begrudgingly undertaken Meredith’s request, truly believing she could rescue and emancipate the escaped mages and yet had walked back to the Knight Commander with her tail tucked and bile in her throat. How deliberately foolish she had been to let her hubris bring her here.
Hawke doesn’t realize she’s finished eating her food until she is already upstairs pulling her breast band off from under her linen tunic. She lets the fabric haphazardly drop to the floor and she drops down upon her bed in the same fashion.
This exhaustion will kill her if given the chance and she refuses to let it.
Hawke immediately stands back up out of bed and casually walks over to the plush area rug and plants her feet firmly on the floor. She slowly raises her arms, extending them to stretch towards the ceiling then gently back down to the floor, folding herself in half until her lower back aches in anguish.
Her anxieties have knotted themselves under her skin, deep below her muscles which display more prominent and gaunt lately. She’s overworked and sleep deprived and whenever she’s at The Hanged Man these days Varric is always trying to get her to order food on his tab when she just wants to lay in his bed and work through all their problems together.
He tells her she can’t solve it all. He tells her to be careful.
She hears him but rarely heeds. If she wasn’t the one to jump in the middle then who the fuck would? Kirkwall would be overrun by tyrannical Templars and misguided mages and the city would burn to the ground. She’s the “Champion” and she’s expected to fix this.
She stretches until she can pretend that the aches have dissipated. She knows she won’t be able to sleep with the image of Huon’s milky, soulless eyes, boring down on his wife after he “sacrificed” her.
Without further consideration she does her best to banish her thoughts and fears and she grabs her overcoat on the way out the door.
Her feet take her to Lowtown and she lets Varric order her food on his tab that she dutifully eats. They play Diamondback and drink rum and Hawke decides, for just one night, to ignore the incessant pounding of obligation that looms all around her.
These things usually work themselves out anyway.