i.

The Stolen Scarf

Kaycee closed the door behind her and sighed. It wasn't that it didn't tickle her inner rebel that all Kirkwall—Kirkwall, of all places—had decided 'ask the apostate' was the go-to solution when they were in trouble, but it was somewhat exhausting. Shades and demons on the coast today, Coterie tomorrow—and Aveline wondered why she didn't get a job! Sometime over the last three years, someone had set her up as a full-time hero! It was probably Varric's fault. Him and his stories. Sometimes Kaycee just wished he'd asked first before he went around telling everyone she was ten feet tall and devoured dragons for breakfast.

Kaycee leaned her staff up against the coat rack and stepped into the parlor, and stopped. It was almost time for the third watch of the night. Her mother and the household staff had long since gone to bed—so it was far too late for the elf sitting on her bench to be there for any normal visit.

"Fenris—"she began, uncertain.

That was all she had time for before he'd risen from the bench and crossed over to her. In one fluid movement he was before her, standing far too close for propriety, not touching her yet.

"I have been thinking of you," he said. His voice was low, urgent. "In fact, I have been able to think of little else. Command me to go, and I shall."

The patterns on his skin were shifting and shimmering. His eyes blazed, and Kaycee stared back at him, her mind racing miles a minute. Her heart had started pounding. Her stomach had gone tight. She felt goose bumps break out on her skin, suddenly thrice as sensitive to every current in the room, humming in expectation.

Fenris had thrown her the other night, and this was another surprise. She'd seen that he'd begun to take their little games very seriously some time ago, and she'd been curious as to just how far she could take it. Fenris was a mystery and a challenge to her, an interesting possibility—but he was also her friend, and she'd suspected almost since she'd met him that Danarius might have used his slave as more than a bodyguard or a repository for magic, so she'd never thought that Fenris would feel like acting on whatever feelings he had developed for her until he'd said so earlier this week. Certainly she'd never expected him to come to her like this. That he had, though, was—exciting.

He was fairly vibrating with need and frustration, she saw, amazed. Pupils blown wide with desire. More beautiful than she'd ever seen him—dangerous, too. Kaycee wanted to explore this.

She shook her head. "Never," she answered him at last. Before he got the wrong idea, she raised her hand. "I will never command you," she clarified. Fenris's eyes, if possible, blazed even hotter, hot enough to burn. Kaycee cocked an eyebrow, let a smile play about her lips, baiting him. "Was there something you wanted?"

He swore explosively, a Tevinter curse she didn't know, and then he was on her, grabbing her waist, pulling her flush to him—and Maker, he had been thinking of her. His mouth was on hers, bruising, unforgiving, fevered and insistent, like he was trying to devour her, or—no. More like he was suffocating, and she was the very air he breathed.

Kaycee's brain stopped functioning. Her spine melted. Her knees turned to jelly, and she wrapped her arms around Fenris, as much to hold herself up as to kiss him back. There was a sharp, metallic scent to him, a buzzing current coming off his skin—the lyrium, excited like she'd only ever seen it in battle.

Then his tongue was in her mouth, and she fisted her fingers in his unkempt white hair and pressed up into him with her whole body. He was unprepared—he staggered back and hit the wall, but when she would have pulled back to see if he was hurt, Fenris just gripped her waist harder, refusing to release her even for a second.

The tips of his gauntlets dug into the flesh of her hips, and Kaycee moaned into his mouth at the stinging sensation, more pleasant than painful. Fenris growled, and his hand shifted, pulling her even closer, moving down to grope her backside.

"Where?" he asked, biting her jaw, kissing her ear, her throat.

"Upstairs," Kaycee gasped. "Second door on the left."

"Can I—"

"Maker, if you don't!" Kaycee laughed breathlessly.

Fenris met her eyes, and her dazed amazement and delight, the kindled desire he must have seen there seemed to be all the confirmation he needed. He nodded once, hoisted her legs up on either side of him, and carried her. Kaycee clung to him blindly, meeting his searching, scalding kisses helplessly. There was a blossoming warmth in her stomach, a growing ache between her legs. She'd felt it before. But never like this.

At the top of the stairs, Fenris shouldered her door open and kicked it shut after them with an audible thud. In the back of her mind, Kaycee registered they might have woken Orana or her mother, also housed on this floor. She found it hard to care as Fenris tossed her on her bum on her bed. Without further ceremony, without bothering with the lit lantern or dropping his gaze for a second, he started stripping off his gauntlets.

Kaycee gazed back at him from where she sat on her bed, quivering with anticipation.

This would be interesting.

A sudden blaze of warmth and light roused Kaycee before dawn, and her heavy eyelids fluttered groggily. She stretched like a cat. Maker, she felt better than she'd felt in years—since the family had left Lothering, at least. Her lips were still swollen; she felt that there would be bruises on her jaw, neck, and collarbone. The soreness she felt already between her legs meant that walking and fighting might be an interesting prospect today, but she was warm and full and contented, languid and relaxed. It had been so long, she couldn't be absolutely certain, but she had a feeling she'd never felt this good even back in Lothering.

Murmuring wordlessly, without opening her eyes, Kaycee reached out to touch Fenris, to convey her satisfaction and gratitude, but she felt only emptiness beside her. The heat and light that had woken her registered then, and she opened her eyes.

Fenris was standing by the hearth, the tongs inside his hand. There was a fresh log upon the fire, and by its light she could see he was completely dressed, staring into the flames in bleak misery.

And she knew.

Kaycee smiled sadly, and gathered the sheet to cover herself. She cleared her throat, and Fenris looked at her. She supposed she should be grateful that it seemed he had stayed to say farewell. He replaced the tongs.

"Was it that bad?" Kaycee asked, without beating around the bush. She endeavored to keep her voice light, familiar, but couldn't quite hide the note of uncertainty there. She hadn't started the night any virgin, but it had been years, and even back in Lothering, she had hardly been the most adventurous young woman in the village. Fenris had—no—he had been the best sex of her life. If she hadn't been the same for him, or if all his desire hadn't been able to vanquish the specters of his past when it was over and he lay beside her in the dark, that would be . . . that would be a blow.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It was fine."

Kaycee swallowed, suddenly feeling small—and despite the rekindled fire, quite cold. She drew the sheet more tightly around herself. Fenris saw it, and he started to cross back over, then shook his head. "No," he said quietly. His eyes found her face, "That is insufficient. It was better than anything I could have dreamed." Kaycee searched his face, and found she believed him. Believed him so much her heart gave a respondent throb.

"Then why—" she evaluated him. "Your markings. They hurt, don't they?"

She had started last night gripping the sheets as he explored her body, fiercely determined in a place beyond words or thought that however much she wanted him, every move should be his choice, that not a single touch would hurt him or give rise to a painful memory. He had been dissatisfied with this, though. He had taken her hands and put them on his body, giving her permission, and what had begun almost wholly one-sided, though certainly not unenjoyable, had dissolved into a blissfully mutual experience as she'd taken him as fully and freely as she'd given herself over. Raw passion had evolved into need and as they'd finally come apart, for a single moment into something far deeper than even that. But now, she wondered if they had been unwise.

But Fenris looked away into the fire. "It isn't that. I began to remember my life before. Just flashes," he told her.

The excuses came tumbling out of his mouth one after the other. He'd lost it again; he couldn't take it; it was too much; it was too fast. Fenris's usual eloquence had deserted him, and all his stumbling attempts at explanations boiled down to two simple facts: he was leaving her here alone, and he probably wouldn't be coming back.

Kaycee watched him fumble, caught between compassion and sadness, resignation and frustration. That he was leaving perhaps was not much of a surprise. She could have halfway expected it. But why, and the way he was leaving—that was the surprise.

Her eyes had caught on something she hadn't seen before—a blood-red scarf tied around his wrist that certainly hadn't been there last night. The scarf was familiar to Kaycee, and the gesture gnawed at her.

The import didn't escape her—that it was their liaison, whatever they had touched together, that had been the catalyst for reactivating his buried memories, even for a moment. But to leave for that seemed senseless, stupid.

"We can work through this," she suggested. She would not beg him, but she saw already it was no good.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I feel like such a fool. All I wanted was to be happy, just for a little while. Forgive me." He backed out of the room, slowly at first, then faster. His guilty, confused, green eyes didn't leave her face till the last, when he turned with a muttered curse and disappeared.

Kaycee looked down at the floor. She wasn't—she wasn't heartbroken, she decided. She had never expected him to come to her, and even if she had, she wouldn't have expected it to last. But . . . she was sad. Sadder than she could have imagined she would be. If he'd wanted to be happy, if he'd been happy with her, even for a second, why in Andraste's name couldn't he just be happy? Maybe his life before would come back, and maybe it wouldn't, but he didn't have to let it taint what he had now. He was choosing to do that.

Kaycee drew her knees up to her naked chest beneath the sheet. That was the heart of it, wasn't it? It was his choice. And after the life he'd led, she wouldn't take that away from him, wouldn't fight it, not while she claimed to be his friend.

She sat there for a long while. Then she rose and walked over to the wardrobe, clutching the sheet around her. She opened the door and looked at where her scarves hung beside the few dresses her mother insisted she keep for entertaining noble guests and for business transactions, and saw she had been right—one was missing.

He could not have known it was her favorite.

There were others far more valuable, richly embroidered or of finest Orlesian silk, but he'd taken the simple linen one she'd bought from Gamlen's neighbor in Lowtown, because she liked the color against her skin, and because the fabric was from Denerim, like Gamlen's neighbor. Yet Fenris had taken that one, her favorite, and not any other, and he hadn't even asked permission.

Would she have given it to him if he had asked? It wasn't like she'd withheld anything else, she thought, with a surge of bitterness. And staring at the empty hook where her favorite scarf had once hung, Kaycee knew that was the problem. It seemed Fenris had taken more than just her favorite scarf away with him.

She couldn't pin down now what she'd been thinking when he'd come to her. It hadn't been love, not the love she'd seen between her mother and father, anyway, or anything like the consuming passion she'd felt for the tinker's lad when she'd been a girl of fifteen. Maybe she'd let her curiosity get the better of her, or once he'd kissed her, she'd succumbed to a lust-addled fog. Or maybe—just maybe—she'd done it for him, because if in his freedom he'd chosen her, in that moment she'd wanted to give him all that was in her power to give.

But it seemed she hadn't grasped exactly what she had done until it was done, hadn't realized how much she'd given until she'd given it away. Kaycee supposed she couldn't blame Fenris for taking everything she'd offered with him when he'd gone; she wondered if he even knew how much he'd left with. How could he, when she hardly knew herself? But she felt dazed and empty and a little hurt, and like her favorite scarf, it seemed some small part of her was gone. And Kaycee didn't know if she'd ever get it back.

A/N: So this is a seven-part relationship study, similar to one I wrote for Lily and James years ago and the thirteen-part study I wrote two years ago (recently edited and updated) for Alistair and Cousland. Sarcastic Mage!Hawke, brilliant and bored. The study is already complete, so I'll just post a chapter every day for you guys. This is not a big deal for me; the fic is just decent and done and there's no reason not to share it.

I hope you enjoy,

LMS