Chapter Text
Fenris didn’t hate Anders, not really. It was this, somehow, more than anything else, that dragged him back from the precipice of oblivion.
The mage was babbling, his voice high and strained with panic. Fenris supposed his situation must have been rather dire for that. For all that Anders seemed to have no concept of how loud he could become, he very rarely panicked. Fenris imagined that being a Grey Warden would do that to you. Raiders and slavers would pale in comparison to archdemons and broodmothers.
Anders’ words come to him slowly, filtered through the gauze of the common tongue that Fenris has learned in the three years following his escape, and mastered in the three years after that he has spent at Hawke’s side.
“ - you stupid elf, you can’t die, not now, not here. I mean, what would that do for my reputation? And more importantly to Marian. I know you hate me, but she really doesn’t deserve to lose one tattooed brooding pain in my - ”
Fenris got the general idea. When he speaks, his throat burns. “I don’t hate you, mage. I simply disagree with you and everything you stand for.”
At last, Anders’ figure: kneeling above him in some Maker-forsaken slaver cavern, all blurred greens and golds, resolves itself into the acquaintance Fenris has come to know since his arrival in Kirkwall. The mage grins and Fenris adds that, too, to the evidence of how close he’d come to the great welcoming arms of the Void. It would have to have been dire indeed, for Anders to swallow his usual impatience.
With a sunny smile, Anders claps his hands. “You know what? I’ll take it.”
Fenris tries to sit up, and clenches his teeth when he does so. He doesn’t whimper: he has learned to swallow pain far more severe than this and far more masterfully crafted. Anders’ hand touches his shoulder, barely, more a suggestion of touch than its reality, and gently pushes him back down. When Fenris looks at him, the corners of the mage’s eyes are tight.
“Best not. I’ve done what I can, but the damage was - ,” Anders hesitates, breaking Fenris’ gaze, “substantial.” One of his shoulders lifts in half a shrug, and he raises a hand, around which a weak flickering imitation of his usual power glimmers for a moment. “And I’m all out of mana, so I can’t fix it again. Guess I’m the weak simpering coward you always took me for.” Anders’ intonation suggests Fenris should take the insult as humorous, but he struggles to see the levity in it, distracted instead by the sharp way Anders’ mouth curls in an expression that looks nothing like the smile he’d been wearing mere moments previous.
Fenris doesn’t have the energy to scale the mage’s walls. So he lies back, and rests.
When Fenris wakes again, it is to the smell of blood. This is not so unusual, but he tenses regardless. The tattoos in his body make their protest known at the sudden movement, but his abdomen is blessedly quiet. Fenris takes as much inventory of it as he can: remembered bruises are barely butterflies on his dry skin, there’s a tightness that runs right across his gut in a ragged line and a dulled pounding at the back of his head.
Then he listens. There’s a fire crackling, and the warm rumble of Varric’s voice, regaling his companions with some improbable stunt he’s credited to Bianca in the chaos of battle. Isabela laughs, loud and raucous, and Hawke’s sharp tongue joins the conversation, quick and light and grinning. He cannot hear the mage.
Fenris frowns, blinking sleep from his eyes, and stares up at the faint blue luminescence of insects in the cave’s ceiling. Amber sparks drift up into the darkness, scattering the stone with firelight. The smell of burning wood and cooking meat fill his lungs, barely overtaking the sweat of his companions and the spilled blood of their foes.
Cautiously, Fenris stands and makes his way to the fire. Hawke is resting against her mabari, its great head peaceful in sleep. Beside her, Isabela sits sprawled against a rock, and opposite them across the fire Varric sits beside Bianca, coat shrugged over his shoulders and shirt incongruously unlaced. They’re fine. Fenris feels some of the tension slip from his shoulders. There had been a part of him that had worried - if both he and Anders had been taken out of the fight - about how well his companions would have fared in the battle that had raged about them. Apparently such concern was unwarranted. Fenris feels a wave of something light and warm and too big for his chest swell beneath his ribcage and rise up to his throat.
They really were the most remarkable people.
At this point, Hawke spots him, and her sharp expression eases into one of unguarded relief as she gets to her feet. Her mabari lifts its head but does nothing other than watch as Hawke hops over the fire and stumbles to a stop in front of him, grinning wide and bright. “Fenris! How are you feeling?”
Fenris gingerly touches the fabric over his belly, above the place where he’d been struck. The mage must have fixed his tunic too. Fenris tries hard not to be grateful for the gesture, even as his mind fills with the memory of the wound. It is an impossible thing to have survived. He has seen enough of war to know how quickly the acid of his stomach would have spilled into the rest of him, how quickly his innards would have slipped loose of his skin. Fenris is not a delicate man, but he feels his newly reconstructed stomach roll at the thought of it.
Hawke is still watching him. He meets her eyes. The blue of the creatures on the cave ceiling glitter across her face. “I will live.”
Hawke’s mouth sets into an unhappy frown, but then Fenris blinks and she’s smiling again, leaving him unsure as to whether he’d imagined it. She steps back, and gestures to the slab of stone on which Varric is perched. “Come and sit with us. There’s some food left.”
Fenris eyes the all too familiar, bulbous shape skewered on an old spear across the fire. “Could we not bring rations with us on these expeditions?”
Isabela barks a laugh and takes a swig from her canteen. Fenris would not insult her by presuming that it contained anything other than some ill-gotten, eye-watering version of rum. “See Marian? He can’t be that bad if he’s turning his nose up at spider à la stick.”
Fenris’ stomach rumbles. “I was not turning my nose up at it.” Though there is some part of him that wonders how the new lining of his gut will handle anything he ingests.
Varric, apparently, is thinking along similar lines. “Can he eat solid food?” Fenris sits, and does the dwarf the courtesy of pretending not to notice the way his clever eyes watch him for any lingering signs of injury.
“Anders said he could when he woke. And that he should, actually. So Fenris,” Hawke turns to him, proffering a blackened chunk of spider husk. “Eat your greens.” The inside of the husk is, indeed, an unfortunate shade of green, and the smell is both sour and bitter. Had it been another night, Fenris would have chosen to remain hungry. But his body feels fragile in a way to which he is not accustomed, and if Anders had said that food would help then he would believe it. The man may be an abomination, but he is skilled at his craft. Hawke does not keep company with any who aren’t.
Reluctantly, Fenris takes the offered husk and picks at the stringy, glistening meat inside whilst Varric gives a low whistle. “Maker, he’s good.”
“Who, Anders?” Isabela perks up, her smile a flash of light in the shadows. “He is , and full of all sorts of naughty little -”
Varric chuckles, interrupting before Isabela can tumble down her own salacious path. Privately, Fenris is grateful. He has heard enough exaggerated iterations of Isabela and Anders’ various liaisons to fill a modest bookshop. He feels no need to add another tale to the collection. “As a healer, Rivaini.” Varric says the word fondly, as he does with all of their nicknames. Fenris supposes it’s why he hasn’t yet seen fit to protest his own moniker.
“It is remarkable.” Hawke adds, uncharacteristically sincere. She scratches her chin. “My cousin took an injury like that, in Ferelden. He was dead before he hit the ground. It was...messy.” She shrugs off the memory like so much rainwater, apparently oblivious to the way Isabela is watching her. Fenris averts his gaze. He doubts that either woman would appreciate his intruding on their vulnerability.
Varric does them all the favour of breaking the quiet before it stretches. “I’ve seen it too. And I’ve known my share of healers. In Hightown a comtesse can’t so much as sneeze without someone calling the Circle.” Varric laughs again, but it’s a little more forced this time, and Fenris watches him sidelong, trying to understand the reason for his bitterness. “Never saw a Spirit Healer though. Maybe that’s it.”
Hawke makes a soft sound of affirmation. “Beth said they’re rare, powerful.” Hawke’s mouth curls with a fondness it seems only to sport when she speaks of her sister. “She called them a blessing. A gift from Andraste, to heal the hurt that we cannot.” Hawke’s eyes flicker to Fenris then, quick and defensive. Fenris lets it pass. He can imagine no universe in which magic is a blessing, let alone of Andraste. But he is also reluctant to press on the still fresh wound of Hawke’s sister, so soon after she had been lost to the Deep Roads and their demons. Besides, the mage is not present, and he is the only one who Fenris feels any need to convince of magic’s intrinsic corruption.
“Where is he?” He doesn’t feel the need to specify, and imagines referring to Anders as an abomination so soon after the man had saved his life would be taken poorly. (And perhaps there is some part of him that feels uncomfortable with the idea regardless.)
Hawke chucks her chin at her mabari, and Fenris sits up a little to look beyond the beast’s great shoulders at a huddle of blankets on the cave floor. In the flickering glow of the fire, he can just make out a handful of copper hair, spilled like expensive yarn amidst the rough wool. He sits back, satisfied. “Is he well?”
Isabela raises her eyebrows. “Do you care?” She makes no effort to hide her incredulity, and Fenris frowns.
“I would care if he died.” All of them stare at him, and Fenris feels at once both very warm and very small. Did his companions really think so little of him? He is wary of Anders, as they all should be. That does not mean he wishes death upon a man who has proven himself a worthy ally. A man who in three years has done nothing to abuse his trust or compromise their collective safety. Still, such an admission would likely be construed as something approaching friendship, and Fenris doubts he has the patience to deal with Isabela’s teasing so soon after his brush with the Maker. “We will have need of his skills if we are to complete this errand.”
Varric’s mouth turns down a little, and part of Fenris quails at the dwarf’s disapproval, even as another part snarls that it is no less than the truth. He sets down his half-eaten spider husk. “I must rest.”
The concern is back on Hawke’s face, but Fenris tries not to linger on it. Instead he gets to his feet, unused to the absence of the familiar burn in his muscles so soon after a skirmish. An old, familiar ache replaces it, lines of pain that seem to sink gnawing into his bones along the intricate curves and stretches of his lyrium. Fenris bites back a sigh and walks to his bedroll.
It is only then that he notices that someone had folded their coat beneath his head in place of a pillow, carefully tucking the feathers away.
“MAGE!”
Fenris supposes it’s possible that any one of the several mages on the battlefield could have construed his shout as meant for them, but only one of them responds. Anders ducks, graceful as a dancer, and whirls, throwing a freezing gust at the slaver that had been about to stab him in the back. The man freezes solid, eyes wide and still moving beneath the glistening shell of fresh ice in which he finds himself.
Fenris’ mouth sets into a thin line and he turns away, hefting the axe Hawke had pressed into his hands mere hours previous. In one swing, he cleaves his next assailant in two, but it does little to erase the image of the other, pinned like a butterfly as he waits for his doom.
The battle rages on. Fenris can taste sweat and blood and other things dripping into his mouth. These skirmishes were nothing like the Provings into which Danarius had so delightered in entering him. There was no beauty here (there had been no beauty there, either). Slavers like these fought dirty and desperate, their blows weak and unskilled, but manic and unpredictable in their sheer bloody determination to stay alive. These and their numbers had Fenris’ breath heaving in his chest.
His tattoos are screaming now, white-hot brands that writhe on his skin with every step, protesting their abuse. Fenris ignores them. He’s good at that.
A behemoth of a man lifts a sledgehammer to bring it down on Hawke’s unsuspecting head, and Fenris slices the thing in half before bludgeoning the man’s knees, back pressed up against Hawke’s armour. Apparently oblivious to the blood dripping from her hair, Hawke laughs and presses back for a moment in boisterous camaraderie. “Fenris! We must do this more often.” Fenris takes the moment of his safety to scan the battlefield, trying to assess any significant threats.
“I would prefer that we didn’t.” He says, calmly. Hawke just laughs again, and ducks, suddenly, to slip between a woman’s legs, slicing her calf-strings as she does so before tumbling back onto her feet and lightly tossing a grenade at one of the enemy apostates.
“Let’s table it.” She calls back over her shoulder, using the cavern wall to jump up and onto another man, twisting her legs around his neck and using the momentum of his falling body to kick a pair of archers onto their backs.
Fenris feels the corner of his mouth pull into something resembling a smile, a reflex he long since thought he’d mastered, but over which he’s begun to lose control in these last few years. The woman’s humour is infectious.
He easily parries the next attacker who comes for him, using the haft of his axe as a barrier for the cheap steel of her daggers, before twisting and letting the weapon’s weight bring it down on her shoulder. The daggers clatter to the floor, and Fenris grabs the woman’s head, bludgeoning it against the cave wall in one swift blow. He has no interest in prolonging such things, and drops the woman’s body to the floor without a second glance.
Varric is on a staircase, calling taunts, Bianca leaping in response to his deft touch. Isabela is below him, sheltered by the hail of arrows from above. In a moment, she’s joined by Hawke, and the two settle easily into fighting back to back. As they move, Fenris wonders how anyone could be unaware that they were in love - their movements are quick and fluid and mirrored as the most intimate of dancers.
Then there’s a scream. Fenris frowns, turning back to the battlefield as a whole. It’s a sprawling sandy cavern that stinks of saltwater and rat droppings. Sunlight pours in from a weather worn hole in the ceiling, and beyond it seagulls and the roar of the ocean are a distant underscore to the discordant clang of their battle. There are only a handful of their opponents left now, and most have clustered around the knot of death that constitutes Varric, Isabela, and Hawke, presumably imagining them to be vulnerable targets for their lack of heavy armour. Fenris turns away from them, striding quickly into the centre of the cavern to get a better view.
There’s a glimmer of blue light to his left, and Fenris flinches, bracing himself for the familiar crushing hum of magic in his bones. None comes: instead the mage focuses on his attackers - two brutish sorts armed with shortswords. Fenris feels himself relax. Anders has fought his way out of darkspawn hordes and dragons’ nests. Two second rate slaver hirelings would be of little matter to him.
He’s about to turn back to the rest, to see if perhaps he could join in Hawke and Varric’s game of counting their kills, when there’s another shout. It is unmistakably the mage this time, and Fenris scowls. Anders is rarely so loud, even when he’s hurt. It’s a stubborn quality (and one Fenris refuses to admit they share) that has more than once compromised his chances of survival. For him to be crying out now - Fenris marches towards the scuffle, smothering his irritation at the mage for drawing him away from the group and deciding to berate him for it later.
It’s only when he gets closer that Fenris can see the issue: one of the hirelings has had the bright idea to skewer Anders to the wall with their sword. The thing is stuck through his shoulder, and the injury bleeds steady and sluggish around the tarnished metal. Anders’ pale face is grey and sweat glitters on his forehead. His staff is discarded on the ground nearby. In the time it takes Fenris to act, one of the slavers grabs the sword and twists it with an ugly grin. Anders keens.
Fenris doesn’t think. He kills them.
Behind him the sounds of the battle are drawing to a close, creaking leather and gurgling shouts leaving the light grey walls of the cavern echoing like some terrible cathedral. Fenris barely hears them. The slavers had apparently lifted Anders off his feet, and now he hangs awkwardly from the sword, attempting to relieve the pressure by standing on his toes as he raises his good arm to remove it.
Fenris steps forward, and bites down the ripple of concern that rises in his chest when Anders’ uneven pupils turn to him, unfocused in pain. “Fenris?” Anders’ words are mumbled and breathless, and Fenris doesn’t see much reason to respond. Instead he steps forward and puts his hand on the sword hilt. Anders’ eyes widen, and blue cracks break across his skin. Fenris flinches in spite of himself, and curses both himself and the injured man before him for it. “Don’t!”
“What.” The word is spoken more like a curse than a question, but Anders is not apparently lucid enough to take issue with it.
Anders shakes his head, and his hair clings to his cheeks as he does so, sweat damp and ruddy with blood. “Blood loss.” He shuts his eyes, slumping. Fenris catches him around the waist before he has time to think better of it, lifting him and easing the pressure on the wound. Anders sobs, and Fenris feels something in his chest squirming with discomfort. He does not doubt that the mage would hate to be seen like this, by him most of all. But there is little he can do about that now. Anders looks down at him, and his gaze is unsteady, meeting Fenris’ eyes and then drifting away. “Please get me down.” The words slur, but Fenris doesn’t need to be told twice. Carefully, holding Anders’ body with one arm, he extricates the sword from the stone with the other. It’s not easy: Anders’ is much taller than him, and Fenris needs to stretch awkwardly to reach the sword. But he manages it, and lays both Anders and the sword onto the ground.
The battle is certainly over now. Distantly, Fenris can hear Hawke and Varric laughing, and the soft hiss of weapons being sheathed. The silence around him seems to be almost a physical thing, weighing down on his shoulders. Fenris clenches his jaw. “Now what? Mage.” Anders has shut his eyes, and his skin in the sunlight is deathly pale. His chest doesn’t move, and Fenris’ heart clenches in one tight beat of panic before he slaps him, hard. Anders flinches, and chokes on a sound when the movement pulls at the sword. He frowns up at Fenris.
“Why’re you hitting me?”
Fenris disregards the question. “The sword, mage. Can I remove it?” Anders’ eyes slide to the cheap sword skewered through his shoulder and he grimaces, raising a hand. Blue light flickers weakly around his fingers. He slumps back onto the cave floor and laughs, weak and hoarse. Fenris’ frown deepens. “I do not see what is funny.”
Anders chuckles again, his blood running in a steady stream from his shoulder. It’s pooling around Fenris’ toes now, warm and liquid as it soaks into the sand scattered across the cavern floor. Anders lifts his hand, and the blue light flickers again. “No more magic. Again.” Anders grins, and it’s the same sharp imitation of a smile he’d worn before. “I bet you love that.”
Fenris decides not to rise to the jibe. Instead he goes into the pouch at his belt. “You cannot heal yourself.” It’s barely a question, but Anders grunts and nods.
“The sword is preventing the worst of the bleeding and I, ah, can’t afford to lose much more blood than I already have.” He says the words as if they’re of no consequence. Fenris decides not to waste time wondering why. He glances at the corner where Anders had been pinned: there’s a dull rosette of blood staining the stone, and a greater pool beneath it. It’s a wonder the man is lucid, let alone speaking. Fenris wonders if it has anything to do with his status as a Grey Warden.
Finally, he finds what he’s looking for, fishing an Elfroot potion from the pouch on his belt. He uncorks the thing and presses it to Anders’ lips. “Drink.”
Anders does so. After a moment, a flush of colour returns to his face, and he hisses. Fenris supposes the numbness that came with such blood loss may have had a palliative effect, too. He waits for Anders to look at him again. “Another?”
Anders nods, and Fenris presses another to his lips, unable to shake the intimacy of the act. This close, the copper and gold flakes in Anders’ eyes are as beautiful as Isabela claimed, and there’s a faint scattering of gold freckles around his forehead, along his nose, and across the high points of his cheeks. Fenris wonders whether they would darken in the sun. The sweet scent of the potion fills his mouth. It strikes him that in this moment, breathing the taste of elfroot, blood and honey, he knows exactly what it would taste like to kiss the mage.
Fenris frowns, pulling back. An absurd thought, and one that needn’t be lingered on. He tolerates the mage, at best. Nothing more. Anders’ chest rises and falls in a slow, measured breath, deeper than any he’s taken since Fenris had seen him pinned to the wall. Fenris viciously ignores the wave of relief that rushes up from the base of his spine to crash down over his pounding head and aching shoulders. He leans forward, careful to curve his body in such a way as to maintain the greatest possible distance between them. “The sword?”
Anders grimaces. At his side, his hand curls loosely into a fist. There’s a scar on the base of his thumb, and Fenris finds himself wondering how he obtained it. But then Anders nods, and Fenris grips the hilt of the sword, pulling it free in one clean movement. This time Anders doesn’t cry out. His hand curls loosely at his side, and then he sits up a little, jaw tight. Fenris moves and hesitates, unsure whether to help or stop him. Anders’ nostrils flare as he breathes through the pain.
“Fenris, I need you to put pressure on the wound.”
Fenris nods, complying before he asks, a little warily, “Should you not be lying down? This cannot be easy.”
Anders huffs another laugh, breathless and high. “Whatever made you think that?” His hand moves up in a quick, fluttering spasm. “I need to keep it raised to slow the bleeding.” Blood trickles slowly between Fenris’ fingers, warm and wet. Fenris shifts, his body making his decision for him. Carefully, he braces Anders with one arm whilst the other maintains the pressure on his wound.
Anders leans back into him gratefully, and Fenris takes a moment to consider how very little the mage actually weighs. It cannot be healthy for a man of his height and build. But then Anders is looking up at him, eyes yellow as a cat’s in a face streaked with sweat and blood and soot, copper gold hair hanging lank and mussed around his face. “Fenris, I never knew you cared.”
For some Maker-forsaken reason, Fenris feels his cheeks burn. He breaks the mage’s gaze to look at his wound instead, and tries hard not to think at all about the warmth of the man in his arms.
“Anders?”
Fenris supposes Isabela has a reason for maintaining her reputation of caring little for anything or anyone, but he is not sure how anyone believes it. He doesn’t know whether the woman is simply less guarded than she claims to be, or if she has begun to deliberately lower her guard for the sake of Hawke and her companions. He’s inclined to believe the latter, and is warmed and flattered by the thought which follows it - that he is among those Isabela trusts enough to be openly kind.
The mage is, too, of course, and it is he on whom Isabela focuses, crossing the cavern in a handful of silent footsteps. She crouches beside them, sharp eyes taking in the cheap sword, the red rose on the cavern wall, the puddle at the base of its scarlet stem, and the wound under Fenris’ bloody hands. Isabela scowls, and Fenris is reminded that for all her kindness she is also a terribly efficient killer. “What happened?” Her voice is flat and sharp in a way Fenris imagines it would be on her ship following some minor disobedience. He finds himself answering in kind.
“Some hirelings pinned him to the wall. His mana is expended and the blood loss has weakened him.” Fenris’ mouth twists. “I believe that this is all we can do until his mana is restored.”
Anders blinks up at him, and Fenris tries not to notice the way the sunlight makes his blonde eyelashes gold. “We’ll make a healer of you yet.”
Isabela’s shoulders slump, and she carefully takes Anders from Fenris’ arms, covering the wound herself. Fenris lets her, and wonders at the sudden sense of emptiness that follows as Isabela smiles down at the mage. “Come here, sweet thing. You’re going to be fine.”
Anders’ blood is cold and sticky on Fenris’ hands. He looks away.