AN: Recommended soundtrack for this chapter: Tenuous Winners Returning Home (watch?v=VHxYpnaaw3s), from the Hunger Games OST.

Romeo. It is my soul that calls upon my name.
—Act II, scene II

—

Time passes. The sun rises over Kirkwall and sets again, one day after another, and somehow the glass-sharp shards of her heart begin to wear down to something less likely to cut her bleeding with an errant thought. It helps that Kirkwall allows little time for private grief; mourning must wait when the qunari set flame to the city in the night, and must wait again with her convalescence after the Arishok's battle. Then there are ceremonies and galas at which she can barely stand, where she is given another name to add to her list: Hawke, Amell, apostate, Champion.

Fenris—helps. He refuses to attend the parties of Kirkwall's elite, which is not unexpected, but he does not hesitate to offer his arm as she begins to walk the slow road to healing after near-evisceration. Once Anders clears her of all restrictions Fenris begins coming to the estate three and four times a week, guiding her in the small exercises made to help the weak to build their strength again. It is exhausting and occasionally humiliating, to be so reduced before him, but it is easier to laugh at those times than any other since her mother died, and for that alone Hawke is grateful.

After she is as healed as she will ever be, he—continues to visit. Not as frequently, but regularly, and because they must both have a reason that he comes the reading lessons resume for the first time in a year.

"Lee-adder," he says one evening, his longest finger on the open page, and Hawke's heart jumps without warning. "Leader. The leader's s—pfaugh. Sword. I tire of these silent letters, Hawke."

She smiles, gives some answer that makes him smirk and eases the lines around his eyes, but she cannot shake the disquiet settling around her with the soft smothering weight of a mantle. Her days have been so full between her healing and Isabela vanishing and her new duties and Fenris that she had not realized—

She has not thought of Leto in months.

—

For years, Donnic had been sure he was meant to be unmarked. There'd been a brief period in his adolescence that he'd allowed himself to resent it, watching the names rise on his friends and then his younger brothers, one by one, each of them relieved and embarrassed and glad alike to know they had a match somewhere in the world. His mother, however, had had little tolerance for his own wallowing, and on his fourth week straight cleaning his father's armor he'd decided it was time to let it go. It would come, or it would not; his own annoyance would not change that.

He can't pin down the moment he had realized he didn't mind. He'd only realized it at a friend's wedding; he'd been watching them duck under the flowered archways together, laughing and clapping with all the rest, and between one word and the next he had thought, surprised at the revelation: I do not need it.

He would like it, certainly; his parents had been too happy together for Donnic to dismiss marriage and family altogether, but—such things happened, and no missing half to his soul meant, perhaps, that he had a whole one to offer to the right person instead. Still, he had not pressed, had not searched; if he was not meant for that kind of life-ending love he would find another kind in its place.

And he had. He'd joined the city guard. His father had approved; but more than that he'd found a family there, his brothers- and sisters-in-arms as dear to him as his own blood. He'd loved them then; he loves them still, even if Brennan is doing her level best to clip his wedding-neat beard every time he looks away. But such are sisters, even guardswomen, and he is marrying today whether his beard is there or not. He doesn't mind.

Aveline had asked him, once, if he'd minded marrying a woman who'd carried another name before his. No, he'd said, easy and true, but even then he could see she hadn't believed him. He'd laughed, taking her hand, and reminded her: she was willing to marry the man who, upon waking with his name come in at last, had stormed out half-dressed and accused Brennan publicly of trying to play jokes on him in front of the new captain.

That had been the day he'd learned how fiercely his captain could blush. She'd blushed as he'd retold the story, too, smiling all the same, and leaned forward to kiss him, and oh, he'd loved her—

No, he thinks, squaring his shoulders, letting Fenris pull the doors open ahead of him with real gladness in his face. Donnic had waited thirty years to learn his name; now that he has he regrets nothing, not the waiting, not the first moments of embarrassment and awkwardness that came and went as swift as a bird on the wing. There is more to a life than romantic love; he has spent his time until now learning that, learning how to be brother and son and friend alike. He will be a better husband for it.

Aveline stands across the aisle in gold and white, Hawke at her elbow, marigolds in her hair lit by the shafting sunlight into flame. She is—beautiful, he thinks, dazed, and then she smiles—

She takes his hand when he offers it, and there is not a name in the world that matters.

—

Eu, as in feud. The ph sound is harder; it takes some time to remember that those two together are F, as in Fenris, and that —ia at the end does not blend like the others but is pronounced each sound on its own. He knows the letters already, and he is so close to the whole…

—

Her library is so quiet. Not that Hawke minds—it's been a long time since any part of her house felt peaceful—but even the streets outside the opened windows are quieter than usual, the fresh spring breezes seeming to soften all but the nearest conversations as they pass. Orana had brought in watered wine earlier, chilled enough that the silver belly of the carafe had beaded with the sunny warmth of the room; Hawke pours herself a half-glass as Fenris turns the page, resting one hip on the back of the couch where he sits with an old genealogy of her family in his lap.

"I still don't understand why you're reading that," she says at last, idly watching a pair of starlings swoop from their nest in the neighbor's eaves. "You said the last book was dry."

"I have found names to be the most… challenging," he admits, and turns another page. "It seems anyone may alter a sound as they please if it's to do with what they're called. How is this said?"

She leans over the back of the couch to see, glass held carefully to the side. "Olivier."

"Orlesian."

"I think so. Mother didn't talk much about those uncles."

He makes a noncommittal noise and turns the page, and between one moment and the next he grows totally still, as if he has rooted, as if the thin clouds passing over the sun have turned him to stone in their shade. He says, his voice awful as she has never heard it before, "Hawke."

She sets down the glass on the carved side-table, alarmed. "What is it?"

Fenris lifts his eyes to hers. She cannot read them. "What is your name?"

"What?"

"Your given name." His eyes close and open again, sharper, and she is trapped, struck as he is, abruptly reduced to the smallest spare points of light and touch: the sun-glint on his white hair, her own heart beating hard and quick in her throat, the fine damask of the couch gripped beneath her fingers. The book still lies open on his lap, and even from here she can read the thin elegant lines that draw out her mother's name, and her husband Malcolm's; and the name of their oldest child, born in Ferelden…

She says, her voice trembling, "Euphemia."

"Called—"

"Eppie. I—I always hated it, growing up."

Fenris shudders. His head bows forward until she cannot see his eyes; the book slides from his lap to thump softly to the carpet by his bare feet. His hands have clenched on his knees hard enough that his knuckles have gone white. His wrist still bears the red band—

A Tevinter curse breaks the library's quiet into glass. Then again, sharper than the first, and Hawke shuts her eyes against it, knowing why, understanding seeping into her heart like a cracked cistern, slow and cold and clear and totally impossible to evade. The couch shifts beneath her hand as Fenris shoves to his feet; the air changes as he takes two steps to the door, stops, comes again to Hawke's side where she stands in the window's pale slender light.

He says, "Hawke."

She opens her eyes. He looks—furious, and wounded, and bewildered beyond belief and—relieved, somehow, for an instant's shadow before it goes again. He holds his own wrist between them, the red band gone. Her mouth is so dry— "Fenris."

His hands lower to his chest, then unbend, his fingers opening like a morning bloom to reveal the bare skin of his marked wrist. She does not need to see it to know what it says. It was the first word she ever learned to write.

She can't breathe.

"This is your name," Fenris says. Then, demanding: "Hawke. This is your name."

The cliff gives way beneath her feet and she is falling, falling; she recoils, one hand over her face, the other fisted to keep from taking his in answer, to keep from mooring herself where she has been told already she has no home. "Oh, flames. Fenris. Fenris, I don't—I didn't—"

"You never told me."

"You never asked!"

"Six years!" he snarls, his cheeks white with anger, and comes to meet her where she has backed against the window. "Venhedis, Hawke! You never once thought to mention it?"

She will not be cowed. Her hand is over her heart— "I have a name too, Fenris!" Leto. Leto. Leto!

His eyes drop to her hand, then come up again, anger easing, something else burning fiercer in its place. "And I have yours."

"You left!" she shouts. Something in her is breaking, tearing all her heart with it—

Fenris stiffens, his gaze flicking to the window behind her. She can still read part of the word wrapped around his dark wrist: E-U-P-H— "If I'd known," he starts, his voice lower, "if I had known then…"

"You would have left anyway." She doesn't mean it as accusation, but he flinches all the same. "There's no need to lie to either of us."

"I did not mean—"

To see him angry hurts; to see him like this, fumbling for an explanation he cannot give, is worse. Hawke reaches up to touch his shoulder even as he moves to shove his hair from his eyes, and her fingers close around his wrist instead.

They go very still. Fenris's eyes are on her hand, huge and unblinking; she shifts to bare the name—her name, her name, fine block letters just above where the lyrium branches into five delicate lines along his hand—and he shudders, color flooding back into his face again. The knuckles of his other hand rest on the windowsill at her hip; she gives the smallest pull and he comes so willingly, his fingers tangling with hers, his arms caging her where she's half-caught on the sill.

He says her name. It's low and rumbling and her stomach flips like a girl's to hear it so tenderly in his voice; then he says "Hawke," and that is better, truer, because that is who she is, not the other, and she smiles despite herself and then—

Fenris kisses her.

After so long—it hurts, made worse with his tentative care, his fingers brushing her hips, his proud nose against hers. "I need," he says against her mouth, his lips pressing to hers after every word, "to understand this."

"So do I," she answers, wrapping both arms around his neck. He tastes as she remembers; her heart has lodged somewhere behind her ribs, to stricken by surprise to beat. Almost three years—

He kisses her hard, reserve giving way to impatience, and Hawke comes to meet him just as eagerly. His hands slide to her waist and he grips her tight enough she gasps his name—and then, like the silence after a blow that marks the instant just before pain, Fenris pulls away. He does not speak; he does not have to. She can read every word of it in his face.

He will not stay until he knows that Leto is forsworn. Hawke cannot yield Leto until she knows that Fenris will not leave. Impossible. They are fools both, to trust each other so completely except for this.

"Fenris," she says again, and he touches her cheek so carefully she thinks she must shatter. There is nothing else she can offer but herself; there is nothing she can take from him but the same, and here, it is not yet enough.

At last, so low she can barely hear it: "Danarius still lives. Let me kill him. Then, if I—if you…" He shakes his head at his own faltering; then his jaw sets with determination and he makes a decision that she can feel, and he kisses her one last time, carefully, until her heart is sore. "Wait for me, Hawke."

"I hate waiting."

He laughs. "I know."

Her chest is hot and floating, Leto burning in her skin, hope carrying her higher even than that. It is a reason, if nothing else. She had not known how much she needed one. "I hope you tear the bastard to pieces."

A startled look, and then a real smile, and a nod, and then—he is gone.

Later, when Hawke can control her hands properly again, she lifts her mother's book from the place where it fell and turns to the last page. Leandra in small, delicate script; and then, in her mother's handwriting, clear and strong: Euphemia, Bethany, Carver.

And after them all: Hawke.

—

An elf woman sits in the Hanged Man, slender and graceful and bent as if the world has grown too heavy over the years. Her voice—Fenris knows it, knows too the proud turn of her head when he calls her name. A girl, red-haired, younger; she lets the tattered cloth fall shut behind her, closing away the glare of Tevinter's summer sunlight, her anger fading into shadow—

A slim woman with grief in her eyes, and gentle hands worn from long labor. His mother. Red-haired, younger—his sister. A narrow light on his wrist, cool fingers, soft and familiar.

Hide it. Forget it, if you can. It will kill you otherwise.

He will not forget—he will not forget—he will not—

"I remember you," he breathes, astonished. "You called me—"

—

Leto!

—

Fenris had not known before that time could stop so totally without the use of magic to kill it. And yet here he stands, as motionless as a mirror-silent pool, staring from outside himself at this still reflection of his impossible, senseless life.

His master stands on the stairs, brought by his sister, the smile on his face the same easy cruelty Fenris remembers. Varania has betrayed him, and Hawke—Hawke has stayed at his back, her fingers around his arm, holding him tight enough it hurts, her breath still caught on the instant before speaking—

"My little Fenris. Predictable as always."

His name is Leto.

"Fenris is a free man," snaps Hawke, and the pool's stillness shatters, so much more than a ripple—a towering wave to tear the surface into froth and spume. His heart stumbles into life again and he gasps, drowning, trying to remember to breathe.

"And this is your new mistress?" Danarius's eyes drop to his slave, and then to his slave's wrist, and Fenris remembers—bruised only there, beneath the scars— "I've heard of Kirkwall's lovely Champion. Euphemia, isn't it? I do hope our dear boy has shown you some of his more… remarkable talents."

He is lightheaded with too much all at once. Fury is safe— "Shut your mouth, Danarius!"

His master's lips thin. Once that would have sent him to his knees; now he straightens his back as Danarius descends, staff tapping on every step, fine grey silk brushing whispers over the Hanged Man's splintered stairs. "You think," he says softly, "that finding her changes anything between us? You are mine, Fenris, body and mind and soul. You knew this, once. It pains me that I must teach you again."

"I am not a slave."

Danarius laughs. "As if invisible chains are not just as heavy. Tell me, woman. How did you feel to learn you bore the name of my slave?"

His name is Leto.

"Honored," Hawke snarls, real anger shot through her voice like gold. Fenris draws in a breath—

The tip of Danarius's staff lights Fade-green. Fenris fires his own brands silver, and Hawke is at his back, and Isabela at the bar grinning as she unsheathes her daggers, and he can hear the creak of Bianca's gears at the top of the stairs—and the battle joins at last.

—

It is inevitable. A tide rising to swallow sand, washing away every trace of passing into nothing; a tree struck by lightning, split tip to root to bare the white-smooth core beneath.

His master's heart beats in his hand, twice, hard. Then it bursts like any man's, and Danarius slumps at Fenris's feet. Fenris stares, gasping, his master's blood on his face—

No. No master, not now, not ever. Danarius is dead.

Leto is dead, too. Has been dead ten years. It is time Fenris set him free.

—

It takes time, after, to sort through the confusion and old, lingering hatred, to ensure Varania will survive the city long enough to leave it. Hawke doesn't mind, though; Danarius has come and died and they have both survived it, will survive more than this now that they have a chance. A chance!

She links her fingers over her face, leaning back until her chair balances on two legs. It's the first time in the full day since Danarius died she has allowed herself to think of it. Leto. Leto, Fenris, Hawke, Euphemia. Isabela with her own name, secret and safe and forgotten; Anders, alias also, with the name on his back dead before him. And Varric parted from his, that pain kept silent, too; Merrill and Carver, only in these last six months exchanging letters with real intent behind the words, and even now Hawke does not know what Kirkwall has yet to bring between them.

Aveline and Donnic, married, content. And she—

The chair's front feet hit the ground with a thump. Hawke stands, deciding, her shoulders squared, her chin lifted. A joy she cannot name is surging in her heart, swallowing her up in light, and she doesn't try to keep back the grin as she catches up her staff and heads for the door.

She has waited long enough.

—

Fenris stands when she enters, sudden enough that Isabela huffs and rolls her eyes from her seat beneath the window. Hawke doesn't mean to interrupt, but Isabela is gone even before she can apologize, a knowing smile playing over her face, and then the door clicks closed and there Hawke stands with Fenris in the dim, dusty light of his chambers, the hearth unlit, his bed half-made, only three steps and a little time between them.

"Fenris," she says, and stops. It must be his choice. It must be him who says—

"Hawke."

Then his hands are on her shoulders and his mouth is over hers, and he is smiling enough to make her laugh against his mouth. In this moment, it is all the answer she needs.

—

Eventually, after the best of the morning has seen them reunite, rest, and come together a second time, Fenris apologizes. It is easier than Hawke expects from him, as if he has considered the words too long; all the same there is naked apprehension in his face as he asks for her forgiveness.

Ha. Naked.

Still, despite her initial inclination to store this moment as safeguard against any future unpleasant impulses, his eyes are too green and his skin too warm for her to let him suffer long. Certainly they are too comfortable together, her leg thrown over his, her weight reclined on his chest, her head on his shoulder. Besides, she forgave him long ago.

She tells him most of this to make him laugh, and he does, his mouth curving in a smile true enough to take her breath away. It's a very kissable mouth with that smile, and Hawke does not disoblige; then she leans back again, sighing, sore and pleased to be so. His hand comes along hers where it rests on his thigh, his dark, strong fingers a pleasant contrast to her own, and she sees again the raised, even letters that wrap his bare wrist like a cuff—or a shackle.

She doesn't want to know. She must ask. "Fenris."

"Hawke."

"Do you wish—" she starts, and then the words die in her throat, susceptible even now to her own cowardice. She closes her eyes, feels the strong slender E pass beneath the pad of her thumb. "Otherwise?"

She feels more than hears him laugh. He frees his hand from hers, moves his fingers to her chin until her face is turned up to his. He says, "Hawke. It was you, first."

She breathes out, deep and slow, a flicker of that same relentless gladness arching high behind her ribs. Her fingers come up to touch Leto, half in habit, half in reassurance; Fenris's eyes drop to her skin to follow the scars, and then he sighs, his chest giving beneath her back. No fear, though; no bitterness. It is a triumph she had not expected.

Still. She says, "What?"

His mouth crooks. "The name on you is not my name. It was once, though, and I wondered…" He shakes his head at himself, abandoning the thought. "I will not be ruled by fate."

"Fate," Hawke snorts, turning until her forehead is buried just beneath his jaw. The lyrium thrums gently with every breath; his heart beats strong in her ears, unfaltering. "I have not been Euphemia since my father died. Perhaps she and Leto were the ones meant for each other instead."

"Perhaps they will fade, as others do."

She grins despite herself, wonders when she learned his voice so well. "Jealous? I haven't even left you yet. It is my turn, isn't it?"

"Hawke," he says, half-serious in the reprimand.

"Fine. I suppose I could always have it tattooed on, if you like."

"Hawke!"

The laugh that bursts out of her startles them both, and before she can wonder at her own happiness she twists in Fenris's arms, her bare chest against his, her hands cupping his jaw, her mouth on his mouth. "Fenris," she echoes, too full with the sight of him, the smell, the taste, the inexplicable joy so near grief of having the one she loves safe at last in her arms, and her in his. His hand spreads heavy and warm over her back, following the bare curve up to her neck and then into her hair, and there he holds her as she kisses him until she is almost senseless and they are both beyond all doubt.

"Fenris," she says again, softly, when she can. "We made a choice. That's all."

His eyes close, come open again with wry humor. "So simple as that?"

"Well. A few side trips, here and there, into emotional devastation and truly unfortunate twists of irony."

"I am named to the strongest mage I have ever known. Is that not irony?"

"Sounds about right for the two of us." Hawke kisses him again, and then his dear, straight nose, and his heavy dark brows. "I'll keep Leto all the same, though, if it's all right with you. Until you're ready to let him go. I've been rather attached to him since I turned fourteen."

"Hawke," he says, low, smiling, and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him with every part of her, no matter what she is called, no matter what he is called. Perhaps, she thinks, this is what Andraste had meant for them to know after all.

He tells her, steady as the earth, "I am yours."

He has chosen. So has she.

—

Juliet.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name, which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

—

end.