sixthiterationlogs | § they rip your claws out and call it a mercy

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§ they rip your claws out and call it a mercy | OTA

WHO: Fenris
WHERE: Fountain and Inn
WHEN: May 8 - 10
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: ... nothing yet
STATUS: ONGOING

i. avanna, soporati | fountain park

It is cold in Ferelden. Cold, with the clamminess of skin-piercing damp, in a way Minrathous never was, a cold that seems to seep into the bones over the course of a night in camp. Not like this. This is cold and splash and the feeling of disorienting movement, as though he'd been thrown into the lake as he slept. Fenris' mouth opens involuntarily, and he swallows a mouthful of water as he forces himself upwards, the only thing he can focus on. He's not a strong swimmer, for what reason would a slave have to need the skill? He'd learned of necessity as he ran from the slavers, but he'd mostly learned to force his way through the water, rather than to swim, and he forces his way now, until one of his reaching arms breaks the surface into free air.

He coughs as he grabs onto the stone wall of what seems to be a fountain, grabs it and pulls, hauling his body out of the water. His feet are heavier than they should be, and when he glances down he sees boots instead of the stirrup heels of his armor leggings. That's not all that's wrong; his clothes are too light, fabric, not metal, and when he reaches around his back for the Blade of Mercy, he finds a backpack instead.

He should run.

That life was years ago, but it's never left him. Something is wrong. Something has broken into his camp, taken his blade and his armor, and an anger swells in him, stirs deep in his veins and under his skin.

"You will not take me!"

He reaches into the anger, reaches down under his skin for the power resting here, and finds ... nothing.

The sensation jolts, like a foot breaking through a rotten plank, and suddenly defiance seems dangerous in a way it hasn't in as long as he can remember.

ii. benefaris | Inn

It is some time later, after Hawke has explained to him, that Fenris reluctantly leaves the house to explore some of their surroundings. There is a mill, a river, a path that leads into a forest which would be easy to lose pursuers in.

He'd never lost the ability to read a location and see what he can use if he needs to flee. A coward's way of viewing the world, perhaps, but a practical one, for a fugitive slave. He follows the path away from the woods, past the mill and across the bridge, and finds himself in the midst of a small village, the houses built in a style completely unlike any he's seen in Tevinter or the Free Marches. The basic shape, yes, shares something with the buildings in Ferelden, but little enough that it all seems strange and unfamiliar.

It's perhaps incautious to follow the person ahead of him into the large, two-storey building, but it's the one place other than the mill which he can wager the purpose of. As he steps inside, it's with a certain sense of smugness that he looks around.

"Ah. This would be a tavern."

Very unlike the Hanged Man, but that is hardly a criticism.

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To say that Evelyn's arrival has stirred some sort of hope inside Hawke would be dangerous. It would also be an understatement. To have someone else who knows about Thedas without her having to explain it, who knows Hawke more than as the Champion of Kirkwall, has touched her deeply. She didn't realize how much she has missed her friends until Evelyn turned up.

Now as Hawke nears the fountain to see a familiar head of bright white hair, hope stirs even more painfully within her.

"Fenris!" she calls, almost too late for his attempt to draw up on his power. She doesn't know if it will work here, though given the look on his face, she's assuming it isn't. Breaking into a run, she hurries over, knowing better than to reach out to him like she would to Bethany. The Champion likely looks strange, out of her armor. Instead she's wearing the red and gold cloak and jacket of too-many-pockets-to-find that she had found not long ago with the denim overalls underneath. It isn't an outfit she normally would wear and hardly even constitutes as decent armor, but it is what she has to work with.

She does, however, take off the cloak and offer it to Fenris. It won't keep off the worst of the chill, that she can deal with when they get to her house, but it might help dry him off a bit anyway.

Words don't come at first as she watches him. She finds it difficult to put into words how glad she is to see him. But she knows she has to say something else -- something that isn't how happy she is to see him -- so she finally settles on, "You're a different color than I was." Scrubs, she means, but with Hawke, she might not even be serious.

Edited 2017-05-08 14:27 (UTC)

He doesn't remember a time before the lyrium, save the occasional hint of memory that seeing Varania again had stirred. It's a time before he was dedicated as Danarius' pet and bodyguard. Varania had told him that he'd fought for the markings, and the position that came with them, so he must have been able to fight then, but he has no memory of it. Had he fought hand to hand, with blows, or had he always used a weapon? He has the strength to throw a man away from him, but he prefers to send a pulse of spirit energy through his enemies.

He'd fought off countless slavers, gangs, and mercenaries for years, but it had been with Lethendralis and the power of lyrium. He reaches into himself again, channeling confusion and anger and fear, pushing it inwards, and tries again.

Nothing.

Fenris looks down, staring at his hand, but the tracing of lyrium is still clear, shining-white. Why isn't it working? He's still staring when he hears his name. Not just his name.

His name in Hawke's voice. But that can't be. Hawke is dead, killed trying to stop that ancient magister tearing the world apart with his magic.

It can't be, and yet when he looks up, there she is, the only true friend he's ever known.

"Hawke." There is a rare wonder in his voice, a murmur filled with hope that he dare not accept. Could this be some trick? A demon, channeling his desire for his friend's death to have been some mistake? Some information, somehow, that Varric didn't have, when he'd sent his message?

No. A demon knows nothing of basic kindness, and Hawke sweeps her cloak off her shoulders and offers it to him. He takes it, wordlessly, courtesy and gratitude momentarily forgotten in the surprise of seeing her.

Demons, also, do not make light, and Hawke, as is her way, comments on something completely irrelevant, though it takes a moment for him to understand what she means. He hadn't noticed the purple color of the clothes he's in until her comment.

"Ugh." His lips purse as he makes the disgusted sound. That's less important now, though, because he has to know, so after a moment, he shakes his head.

"It matters not. Hawke. We were told ..."

No. He will not say it. Not when the grief is still so fresh.

"It is good to see you, my friend."

She can see it in everything Fenris does, everything he isn't saying. His surprise is as clear to her as the water dripping from his clothes and hair. There's little she can do about that, but if Evelyn hadn't already confirmed her suspicions, Fenris' reaction certainly would take the uncertainty from it.

According to both of them, she really had died in the Fade. They might never find a body, but that mattered little. No physical form could survive in the Fade. Not without powerful magic like the Inquisitor's Anchor.

For a moment, Hawke says nothing, simply helps adjust the cloak around Fenris' shoulders. It needs to be just right, as though making clothes fit and work properly will ease the pain of her passing on both of them. As though she can erase the knowledge of her death and give them both something happy. But she can't. Not this time and part of her wants to ask after Bethany, to see how Cailan has been taking care of her, but she doesn't do that, either. To do so would be to make the whole thing too real. Neither she nor Fenris needs that right now.

So instead, she closes her eyes briefly. "I know. Varric would have sent letters." And she knows exactly what they would have said. Her tone begins somber and sad, but quickly grows into her normal teasing dry humor, the tone that she uses when she doesn't want to face something painful. "I'm sure he commented on my dashing hair and how much I've missed everyone. I bet Aveline's waiting to kick my ass for making her worry."

All of her companions had been her friends, real friends, but Bethany, Varric, and Aveline had always somehow been the closest. Even with Bethany locked up in the Circle for so many years.

Not including Anders, of course, but Hawke rarely included him in much of anything these days.

Her face softens just slightly. "Come on. I have a house not far from here. We can talk easier there."

He has gratitude to her for the fact that she doesn't push. He's often appreciated that about her: she will listen, if he needs it, but she will also respect the fact that some things are too painful to speak of. Better for now, she seems to say to focus on warmth, on her offer of kindness to her friend that speaks so much of the true Hawke, not of any apparition.

The unspoken truth cannot be ignored, however, and Hawke acknowledges it with a bow of her head. She knows, then. She knows what he's heard, the impossibility of seeing her in front of him, and yet she is here. And she is correct: Varric had sent letters. He's been in touch with his old friends over the time since the Inquisition started, though not all of them have been easy to find. Fenris had expected to stay largely out of touch with Varric, traveling as he was in the wilds of Ferelden, following the war to dispose of the Tevinter slavers attracted to its destruction like carrion-birds to a dying creature.

Varric's courier had found him, though, and the letter he carried had thrown Fenris into a near-complete devastation. Hawke had been all he'd had left after Danarius' death: his memories were gone, his sister had betrayed him for a magister's power, and Hawke's friendship was the only thing he could hold on to in that loneliness.

"He did," Fenris agrees, though he does not take the bait of her teasing. The memory of struggling his way through Varric's letter is still too clear to him.

"Lead on," he says, instead, ready to fall into his place at her back. He has many, many questions, about how she is here, about how he is here, where here even is, but he trusts her enough to let those questions wait until they are somewhere less open.

Edited 2017-05-09 14:23 (UTC)

Hawke supposes she should have expected Fenris not to rise to her teasing, but it's still a stark reminder of just how somber this meeting really is. Silence falls as she turns to lead him away, a silence filled with a deep-seated sorrow in both of them. Hawke always knew that her death would hurt each of her friends, her sister in particular, but seeing the result here brings that pain to bear in full measure. At least Bethany is not the one speaking to her right now. Hawke isn't entirely sure she would be able to hold herself together through the waterfall.

So she lets the trip be as quiet as possible, almost like a normal journey out into Kirkwall in the middle of the day, watching people as they pass and listening in on conversations. But soon enough, she's walking up to the house and letting them in.

"Fenris," she says softly as she closes the door behind them and leads them into one of the bedrooms on the first floor. "You should know. Inquisitor Trevelyan is here." She knows all manner of vengeance that could be on his mind for letting her die, so she pushes past any protest he might offer. For once, she ignores someone else's thoughts just long enough to make her point. "Try not to blame her for what happened, Fenris. She didn't have a good choice to make in the first place."

There is a small amount of solace in quiet, in not having to discuss what Varric had written, and what it had meant to him. Even stating, or as close as he'd come to stating, what had happened only to see it refuted before his very eyes by her presence had been too much.

A happy event should surely not be painful, and yet it is. He'd never thought to see Hawke again, to walk again behind her as her companion and her friend. She'd been his one friend, the one person he'd allowed to see some of the truth of the questions he'd asked himself, of the unease and uncertainties he couldn't show to anyone else. She'd meant more to him than anything, than his companions or his family, and it feels like a dream to follow her again.

But it would be too much to express, so he keeps the silence Hawke establishes, keeps it as he follows her through a small village, across a bridge near a mill, and into a house on what appears to be the outskirts of the settlement. Unlike their homes in Kirkwall, there are stairs almost immediately upon entering, and she leads him upstairs before they talk.

That, too, is familiar. There had been many conversations they'd only shared once they were deep inside the mansion he'd acquired by driving off Danarius.

Her admonition, though, is unexpected, gentle as it is. The Inquisitor, a woman he's had mixed feelings about since he first heard of her. A mage in a world when the mages have risen against their guards in response to Anders' crime, an uprising that he himself played a part in fomenting, by supporting Hawke's decision to defend the mages of the Gallows. And yet, she is the one person leading the fight against Corypheus' attempt to enthrone himself as a corrupt magister god.

But a pained expression crosses his face, pain that has nothing to do with the unnatural feeling of lyrium under the skin, and everything to do with the woman standing with him.

"She chose wrong."

The entire situation was nothing but terrible, something Hawke wishes she could say rose just out of one of Varric's stories. Out of his mind alone and not reality. Or the will of the Maker, as the chantry would say. But she can't. Evelyn Trevelyan's choice came from Hawke's actions. If Hawke hadn't failed to kill Corypheus for good, if the mage-templar war hadn't started with the fall of the Gallows Circle and Knight-Commander Meredith's turn to red lyrium, none of this would have happened.

If they hadn't found the damned idol, none of this would have happened.

Fenris' reaction is completely expected and mostly justified. If only Hawke could think selfishly about it, maybe then she would not have asked for the outcome she did. Maybe she would be able to be angry about it, about the outcome that clearly took her life. Instead, she closes her eyes briefly and bows her head for a second, letting Fenris know without words that she regrets how she has hurt him and their friends.

"I asked for it," Hawke admits after a moment or two of silence, her head lifting once more as one of her hands worked while she spoke. "Corypheus was my fault and the Wardens needed someone to lead them. Stroud was the best choice to go, which meant I had to stay. I made my choice in the Fade before she even said a word."

It's flattering, in its own way, that Fenris cares so much about her. To see him this upset over her, when he knows her stance on mages and that her sister is a mage, warms a part of her that she didn't think ever would. Were this Bethany she was having a conversation with, she would offer a hug. This is Fenris, though, so she holds back and simply tries to let him know that she does regret what happened and that the choice they faced was so terrible.

"I'm sorry, Fenris. I had to end the nightmare."

Whether she means the nightmare demon itself or the nightmare of her own life she leaves unspoken.

Fenris had spent his whole life with nothing, or almost nothing. What good are possessions to a slave, even if he were allowed them? And as a fugitive from Tevinter hunters, anything he found or stole went towards his own upkeep, to food, to mercenaries on the rare occasions when he could steal enough to pay for backup. But for the years he'd spent on the run, he'd had nothing he couldn't carry, and no connections worth the name. Either were too risky.

Since he came to Kirkwall, everything he's had has been down to Hawke: the book and sword she'd given him, the mansion she'd helped him to claim, even little things to make his armor more effective. Really, he could say that she was all he'd had: her friendship had meant more to him than anything else, and she'd proved to be not only his only friend, but the truest friend he could ever have asked for. She'd been everything to him, not in the melodramatic way Anders might have said it, but because she'd started to show him how he could live the free life he'd claimed for himself and found nearly overwhelming in its import.

"The Wardens!" he spits out. "If Corypheus is anybody's fault but his own, he is the Wardens'. They are the ones supposed to handle darkspawn."

Corypheus. The twisted remnant of the perfect example of Tevinter arrogance, ready to destroy the world to seek as much power as he could. He knows where the blame for that creature lies, and it is not with Hawke.

"Corypheus is the product of his own corruption, nothing more." The words he speaks, though, now sound less angry than they do pained. He cannot be angry at Hawke for her decision, for the burden that she bears for the destruction Corypheus has caused. But, as so often, it is easier to rage than to sorrow.

"Maybe they will," she argues softly, the metaphorical wind having been taken out of her sails. And wouldn't Isabela love to hear her using nautical terms. "But I had to give them the chance. They needed Stroud to lead them. Clarel's death and the Hero of Ferelden's disappearance left them with no one high enough to lead. They needed Stroud."

Thedas doesn't need Hawke anymore, not like Kirkwall once did. And it hasn't escaped her thoughts that maybe none of this would have happened if she hadn't come to Kirkwall, if she hadn't gone to the Deep Roads, if the expedition had never left the surface. Maybe Thedas' current state really is Hawke's fault in more than one way. She prefers not to think of it, though, and even now she shoves that to the back of her mind. It can get processed another day. Late at night.

Hawke has always been a selfless sort of person. Even with her shift in personality from diplomatic to witty, she always has been the type to give of her own self and stores to help those in need. She has often taken the heat for someone else's "failure" in order to help them escape. She did it with Pryce and Athenril and again with Merrill. Many people would see her sacrifice in the Fade as another selfless act. Hawke sees it as inherently selfish as well; in ending her life, she ended any possibility for Thedas to hurt her again and any chance for her to hurt Thedas in return.

Selfish because she knows how much her friends and her sister are hurting because of it.

The worst of it is Fenris can understand her point. The Fifth Blight may be long over now, but Corypheus is an even worse threat, whether he brings an Archdemon with him or not. He'd been the cause of the Blight and the taint and all the destruction it brought with it, even before he'd embarked on this mission to turn himself into a god. The Wardens had failed, letting their own fall to Corypheus' corruption as he remained captive, and again after he'd been freed, if any of what he'd been told held any truth.

Yet the Wardens were still needed if darkspawn were to be contained, those of them who had remained uncorrupted most of all. Trust Hawke to see that, to decide they were more important than she was, despite the horrors they'd committed.

Fenris scowls.

"You would sacrifice yourself for them even after all they'd done."

It's not a question, but neither is it the bitter scolding it might have been years ago, before he'd stood by her to defend the mages of the Gallows against their punishment for Anders' crime. So many of them, in the end, had deserved it, had proven that by turning to blood magic.

It's resigned, because resignation is all he has in the face of what happened. He cannot change the past.

Hawke hears the not-quite-question but not-quite-scolding tone Fenris uses and understands it for what it is. Acceptance, in a way. A small protest. She remembers similar when she made the official decision to support the mages in Kirkwall, rather than the templars. He respects her decision, even if he doesn't like it. Several of them had done the same.

"Wouldn't be the first time," she points out weakly, her humor faltering in the wake of a sudden heartache. All of this is really true, of course, but the tiny part of her that she doesn't want to admit to, the part that she knows and hates to be true, recognizes that she had also selfishly wanted to make up for Anders' crimes. For her part in them and the destruction of the chantry. For not seeing through him sooner.

For trusting him. For loving him. Her broken heart was never enough.

Hawke doesn't cry. She hadn't shed tears when Carver was killed by that ogre, had barely cried when she had found Mother's sewn together head on that horrific body. But this... this almost gets her there. It isn't for herself that she feels the wetness prick her eyes, but for those whom she's left.

Those whom she has hurt one last time.

"I'm here now, though," she points out, lifting her head to offer the smallest of smiles. A distraction from the things they both are feeling. "Unless someone decided to plant a caricature of me. That seems a little silly. Wasted effort and all that."

"No, it wouldn't," he echoes, softly. He's been at her side as she's thrown herself into danger countless times to protect Kirkwall, to defend her sister, to help her friends. He'd never minded that. She was a skilled fighter, with (mostly) good people at her back, and he'd never been particularly concerned about her safety.

It had shaken him in unexpected ways to receive Varric's letter. Hawke had been a constant in his life for years, and even after they'd parted ways, he'd expected her to remain, a key part of Kirkwall once it was safe for her to be so once again. He hadn't expected that she'd be killed. Foolish, for anyone can die, but she'd always seemed to have a way out.

And here, again, she has one, whatever this place is.

"Wherever 'here' is," he agrees. "Where are we? I have no memory of coming here. I was in Ferelden, hunting slavers."

All good people at her back with the exception of one murderous backstabber. Even the blood mage had turned out to be a better person than the healer and wasn't that an irony. For the most part, Hawke has always been able to manage to keep herself and her people safe.

Or to have an out, a way to cheat death, which is why she still hasn't ruled out the idea that this is some weird contrived version of the Fade. She wouldn't even be surprised if this were another test of the Maker. Almost nothing would surprise her now.

"And I was in the Fade," Hawke reminds them both. Not that this is particularly important. "If there is an answer for that, I don't have it." She does pause, eyeing Fenris shrewdly. "A lot of people I've run into here have never even heard of Thedas. It's enough to make your head spin."

His expression grows darker under Hawke's gaze, not because she's watching, but because of what she says. Not that she's confused -- that has happened plenty of times before in their travels -- but the reminder of the Fade, and the comparison with what he'd been doing. It's unsettling, and it gives him that old feeling of magic crawling under the surface, along the veins of lyrium marked in his skin. It hurts, like it constantly hurts, but it's not just the pain that he'd long ago had to learn to live with. It's that old sense of revulsion, that magic has reached into his life again and tried to ruin it.

"Surely even Corypheus cannot change reality at will like this."

He knows too little about the Fade to be certain, but enough to think that while connections from the Fade to the mortal world are different to those within the mortal world, surely she cannot have emerged without knowing it, nor he entered.

"Never heard of Thedas? But it is known as far away as Par Vollen."

She can see the slight changes in his expressions and by now knows what they mean. Hawke and Fenris have been traveling companions for far too long by now not to know or understand it all. Not to see the little shifts in their thought processes, their reactions. Not to know what matters to the other.

Hawke gives her head a slight shake. "No. He couldn't or else he would have little to no reason to want to end up in the Fade. Or he could do it himself. But he can't. No one can. Not without help." Lyrium or the Anchor in the Inquisitor's hand. Whatever it is, no one person can access the Fade without help. That's how it has always been.

His next question gets a shrug from her. She's about as clueless as he is. "I don't know and I wish I did. All I know is some people claim not to have heard of it. Whether they are from further away from Par Vollen or they've simply got selective amnesia, we may never know."

What she says has truth. Corypheus has torn reality in Thedas asunder in his corrupt quest to seek the power he and his other magisters once tried to steal, as they say, from the Maker himself. It seems a strang coincidence, though, to find themselves now so far from Thedas when she had been helping the Inquisitor fight Corypheus and he had been killing Tevinter's slavers wherever they made themselves known in Fereldan.

"I know no way of traveling so far save theoretically in the Fade."

It's the sort of thing the magisters talked about doing when they'd had too much of Danarius' wine, if they had the power, through lyrium or blood. Reaching beyond the boundaries of magic, to the depravity of their forebears.

He scowls.

"Or whether they're lying."

Hawke shrugs. That thought had occurred to her in some measure, though it's difficult to prove. Anyone could be lying about anything and they would likely never know. All the same, Hawke doesn't think so for most of them, though this is hollow comfort at the moment.

"I guess we'll just have to stay and find out," Hawke says wryly, as though they have much of a choice. "There's a tavern in the village. You could go have a drink and listen to a few conversations. They're always gathering points, even when your population is tiny like Lothering."

She probably won't go anywhere for a while. At this point she needs some time to let the hope and happiness fade. Time to stop hoping that Bethany might turn up. Or Aveline. Or even her family mabari.

Having Fenris here gives her more than a little happiness, though. While she doesn't mind the Inquisitor, Fenris is an actual friend, someone who has been at her side far longer than she can count. Someone who had plenty of opportunities to turn tail and leave her or turn against her when their ideals clashed. But he never did. He has always followed her and for that she will be eternally grateful.

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§ they rip your claws out and call it a mercy | OTA

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