A/N: Written for ourcrimescene on tumblr

They come to Skyhold under the guise of mercenaries, hooded, cloaked and travel stained like so many other refugees. It isn't certain what Hawke's welcome will be – the man is just too famous. What happened in Kirkwall is nuanced, complicated, and subject to much speculation, but the Champion's name is widely known.

The voyage to Ferelden is frigid and ridiculous. Their quarters are dank and ratty and smell of nothing but fish and sweat, and Hawke loves every minute of it. Fenris misses Isabela and the captain's quarters of the Siren's Call.

It's... strange. He's been in Kirkwall so long that he's forgotten how wide the world is, and how easily one elf can get lost in it. Of course he's not just one elf, he's one very annoyed elf with giant human in tow. One giant hammer wielding human who gets bored as easily as a child, and spends the long walk from Denerim to Skyhold coming up with alternate names for them to travel under and making a game of lying to everyone they meet.

(Fenris stops him at Notus, rolling his eyes when Hawke slaps his back and guffaws "Get it? Not Us?")

Then again, Hawke has always been one of Fenris' defining characteristics. In Kirkwall they are inseparable, the Champion and the tattooed elf who drinks too much and snarls at children. In Ferelden he's just one more knife-ear on the run from something, just one more tattooed face in a crowd of tattooed faces. It would be tempting to try to get lost here - just for a day of course, it's far too cold and he's no fool. Varric needs them (again) which means it's likely that Thedas needs them (again), and as complicated a figure as the late Knight-Commander has made him, Hawke is still the mortar holding Kirkwall's shaky bricks in place. If Fenris comes home without him there will be no forgiveness, and from Aveline that means ever.

This is what he gets for starting to care, but Hawke isn't wrong when he says that they're like family. Without one another they have nothing.

"Skyhold is huge!" Hawke marvels when it first comes into view, and they're not even close. "Why don't I have one of these?"

"Because we can't have nice things," Fenris snaps, footsore and annoyed, feet crammed into uncomfortable boots for days to avoid his toes freezing in the deep snow.

Hawke just laughs and slaps him on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock him flat, hammer over one shoulder and a cheerful melody on his tongue. Fenris hates him. He hates everything.

It isn't until they find a place in the Skyhold tavern - there's always a tavern; the only surprising thing about this one is that Varric isn't living in it - that the glare relaxes off his face. Or melts, as Hawke puts it, poking Fenris' cold ears until his hands are literally slapped, but the warmth does take the edge off.

Varric meets them at the end of the day. The dwarf has aged in these last months - has it been nearly a year? - lines around his eyes and mouth deepening, cutting canyons in his thick skin. It hasn't been an easy time for any of them; even Hawke, despite his constant childish giggling, is going gray around the temples, and when they embrace one another, man and dwarf, it's stooped under the heavy weight of too much tragedy.

Fenris is not a hero, not by any means, and he is glad. He has one job - keep Hawke alive - and that is more than enough to manage on most days without worrying about rifts into the Fade and dragon fire. Seeker Pentaghast is here, the one they narrowly avoided in Kirkwall after the explosion in the Chantry, and if the things Varric's eyes say that his mouth doesn't are true, this could be complicated.

But things are always complicated, have been ever since he stuck his hand through Danarius' chest and decided that he was done being someone else's puppet. Now he pulls his own strings, which means decisions, often hard ones, and the perpetual need to prove to himself that he can do this, that he is free.

What isn't complicated is the tavern wine. It isn't good enough to be complex, but it's a welcome repast after what feels like unending months on the road, eating journey bread and whatever game Hawke manages bludgeon to death with his charm. He relaxes for the first time in ages, finally able to take off his shoes, to put down his sword, to lean back in a chair that isn't within full line of sight to the exit because if they are safe anywhere, they are safe here. For now.

Hawke makes friends, because that's what Hawke does. There are rowdy tavern songs and a friendly drinking contest with a Qunari mercenary with biceps to rival Hawke's which ends in a rousing song about a brothel in Denerim that Isabela used to tell them stories about. The Qunari's men, an assorted rabble of misfits that go by various nicknames, don't seem to fit in anywhere but together and it makes Fenris… nostalgic. For old times. For nights in the Hanged Man over cards and sour ale, where Isabela's laugh shakes the walls of the room as she cheats at cards and Aveline frowns and sighs over all of them, but smiles in motherly affection when she thinks they aren't looking, hand in hand with Donnic under the table. He remembers nights when Sebastian smiled and put aside the Chant long enough to talk with Merrill about bread recipes and the Creators, and though Fenris doesn't care about either of those things it's more comfortable than the plight of mages.

He even misses Anders. A little. Privately. It isn't something he'd ever tell anyone, least of all Hawke, but it's clearer now, with time and distance and away from the charred black crater where the Hightown Chantry used to be, how alone Anders must have been. They were never friends – mostly they were enemies – but they all should have been more prepared to act, to do something, anything, when it became clear that there was more spirit than man behind the eyes in that haggard face.

It isn't something he likes to think about, even now, too consumed with old prejudice and hate, weariness and grief, so he pours himself another drink and turns his mind to other things.

There is a woman – a girl, really – who sits next to the Qunari (The Iron Bull, that was his name – almost as ridiculous as Hawke; this place is turning into a menagerie) and laughs, her mouth broad and pink under a slightly crooked nose and bright blue eyes that crinkle all along their edges when she smiles. She reminds him of Bethany – the pretty one he tells Hawke, just so the man will pout (ridiculous) – now loosed from the Circle and in far off Antiva with Isabela, well out of the Chantry's way. The only mage he ever liked – he wishes she was here too, if just to see how her brother behaves when she's not there to supervise, flirting beyond shamelessly with a young man from Tevinter named Krem, who looks as though he isn't certain whether to haul the champion of bad puns off to a convenient woodshed for a tumble or to deck him in the nose.

Maybe both. Fenris hopes both, because they all deserve a little joy in their lives, even him.

The girl who reminds him of Bethany gets up for more drinks and they all reshuffle, Hawke sliding in between Krem and Bull (tomorrow they meet this 'Inquisitor' and Varric is going to kill him if he's walking funny, but it's not like it would be the first time). The tavern has grown loud, raucous almost, with the energy of warriors who celebrate every night the defeat of death while knowing it could come for them tomorrow, and everyone is shouting over the music, over each other, and he barely notices when she slides in next to him, startled when she reaches to refill his cup with wine.

She's much older than he first assumed, it's clearer now that she's closer. She carries the same familiar lines as the rest of them, those of worry and too little sleep, but the smile is the same as it was before. Soft and pink and really not reminiscent of anyone he's ever known before; quiet, but not shy – he can tell the difference.

"We haven't met," she says, and her voice is low and strong, teeth white and straight and he must be a little off-center from the wine because he can't stop looking at her mouth. "I'm Rel."

"Fen…" he starts, and then leaves it there because they're supposed to be incognito and he almost forgot, shaking the hand she offered before he realizes what he's doing. He's so impressed with himself that he almost misses the calluses on her palm, the telltale signs of hands used to wielding weapons. No barmaid, then. He isn't surprised – there are no civilians at the end of the world, only people trying to survive.

"I haven't seen you here before, Fen." It sounds odd, the emphasis on his abbreviated name. It sounds different out of a mouth that isn't Hawke's, probably because Hawke is usually whining. "Are you just arrived?"

"Yes," he remembers to answer, gaze flicking up from the drop of wine she licks from her bottom lip to her eyes. The edge of her mouth twitches faintly upward; she's caught him. For no reason at all he wants to laugh. "Just today. We heard the Inquisition might be in need of assistance."

Yes, because "The Inquisition," the massive army of the terrified faithful tasked with fighting demons and closing a massive green hole in the sky, might "need some assistance." From him. And Hawke. Who probably, if the stories about Corypheus are in any way true, is just going to make it worse by virtue of being Hawke. It was a cyclical thing, the man argued – if you started at mediocre and headed south, eventually you would unbalance the world enough that everything flipped upright again. Fenris doesn't buy that logic in the slightest, but at this point – well, he's just hoping for something small and manageable, like dragons.

"Same," she says, and he's glad, because even though he's spent so long discovering who he really is, Fenris isn't particularly good at pretending to be someone he's not. He doesn't want to make up stories about himself like Hawke does, doesn't feel the need to constantly reinvent – just to get back to center.

They… talk. Not a lot, not about anything important, but they finish a bottle of wine between them, crammed in close enough at the table that his knee touches the outside of her thigh, and the air isn't so full of ale and bodies that he can't smell the low sweet scent of her hair. Hands linger around cups, set closely enough to one another on the tabletop that sparks could snap between the backs of their fingers. It's been… a while, and he's never been good at this sort of thing. This is Hawke territory, beyond his realm of comfort, and yet he's oddly relieved when Rel turns to him and says, straight faced and serious - "Look, this is kind of sudden, but – there's a place upstairs. Do you want to get out of here?"

It's been a long time since he's been with a woman. With anyone, really. Hawke falls in and out of beds and brothels oversetting virtues and marital vows alike, but Fenris – Fenris has never been the kind of person to drop boundaries, let alone trousers, without feeling like it meant something.

He'd tried that with Isabela, for a while, but Isabela was only ever going to belong to one person – herself. Fenris found he needed more than that.

Not that that was in any way important in this moment, because that's all it was. A moment. No illusions about that, not when Skyhold is a quick stop on the way to inevitable disaster, but when Rel scoots her chair back and steps around a napping dwarf, he finds himself trailing along after her. He doesn't dare look at Hawke – assuming Hawke is in any position to notice and/or care, which in general is incredibly unlikely – taking the stairs two at a time to catch up as she disappears to the second floor.

It's quieter here, the floor dampening most of the noise from below, but when Rel catches his sleeve and pulls him into the hallway he wants to laugh. For some reason. Probably the same reason as before, which is… unclear. Fenris doesn't usually like being touched but she has no reason to know that; her hands slide up his chest without a stutter, warm through the thick fabric of his woolen shirt, because she's never been told otherwise. For her, Fenris doesn't come with a warning label or a hushed aside. In this moment he is no more than he appears to be, not a tragic figure stepped in violence and mystery but a grown man with a grown man's desires; a grown man with a pretty woman in the dark.

This isn't the kind of thing that is going to last for long, he can tell that immediately. They barely make it through the door, barely remember to shut it behind them before he lifts with the strength honed over years of near ceaseless battle and has her against the wall, legs around his waist. She tastes like wine and warm things, and they don't so much shed clothing as yank at buttons and buckles and ties until there is enough skin against skin to satisfy the sudden flash-fire urge.

It's awkward, just a bit. He trips on his unfamiliar boots and they struggle to get her trousers down past her knees without using their hands, but he is hard and ready and she speaks quietly in his ear, breathy gasps that play against the side of his neck, yes and please and more.

When it's over they almost don't know what to say to each other, catching their breaths in the dim light while a single unlit candle glowers at them from under the bed, knocked over by an elbow or an errant hand. Fenris isn't a gentleman – not exactly. Hawke is his best friend and the most available role model so to be honest he isn't even entirely sure what that means, but they straighten out their clothes, push their hair out of their faces, and he takes the time to slowly and carefully do the buttons up on her shirt, adjusting the collar to hide the mark on the side of her neck where he's bitten. His skin is thicker, he doesn't worry so much about it, but he starts when she reaches up and lays her hand against his cheek.

It's… sweet, a moment out of time, in poor accordance with the frenzy and passion from the moments before, but he smiles and lets himself lean into the touch, savoring it before it is inevitably gone.

Hawke is entirely too pleased with himself the next morning, crawling out of the tent they pitched in the courtyard where the other recruits bivouac out of the screaming mountain wind and stretching bare-chested with a massive yawn. There isn't a mark on him, but Fenris knows better – the man was drunk as a skunk when he crawled in next to him late the night before, smelling like wine and pie with absolutely no explanation. But Hawke doesn't get hung over, because Hawke is a menace. And all in all maybe Fenris feels a little bit more charitable about whatever his friend has been up to; it's not like Hawke was the only one.

It's a pleasant little secret he keeps to himself, right up until they meet the dwarf, the Seeker and the Inquisitor on the ramparts and the entire world drops out from beneath his feet.

"May I present, Aurelia Trevelyan, the-"

"Inquisitor?" Cassandra asks, voice pitched in concern at the enormously pink hue that is slowly creeping up the side of Rel's face.

"We've met."

Beside him, Hawke is nearly apoplectic in laughter, roaring over the ramparts like a drunk dragon, never one to miss smutty subtext in action, and Varric looks at them both, eyes narrowing in a mixture of knowing suspicion, chagrin and very slight approval.

Cassandra is not as amused. "Why are you laughing, Champion?" she demands, and Hawke slaps Fenris on the back so hard the elf almost falls over, turning faintly purple beneath his tan.

"Because this time it wasn't me!"