2. Trust not a horse's heel nor a dog's tooth.

Hawke smells like leather and dried flowers. She sleeps right beside him, tangled in furs and linen, her hair splayed out on the pillow. Her breathing is calmer, more even as her breast moves in a rhythm maintained by Fenris' own heartbeat.

The room is barren as he looks around himself, eyes still bleary with sleep. After Anders marched inside, happy as one can be after Hawke agreed for him to accompany them in their escape from Kirkwall, he and Hawke started to pack whatever they could use while the mage went through medical supplies left. Without Bodahn and Sandal to watch over the mansion, it had been ransacked through just like they thought. Glass had been smashed in cupboards, shelves hung limply from walls and feathers lay in a disarray around punctured pillows.

Fenris was very glad they have been able to find as much as they did.

Now there are three fat rucksacks, packed till their seams started creaking menacingly, propped against the wall, two smaller bags right beside them. Anders can be heard busying himself downstairs, sometimes exclaiming loudly as he preps additional salves or organizes dry ingredients for future use.

"I'm scared" Fenris mutters, inclining his head at Hawke, turning back but not fully. He knows she is awake, has been for some time now. Her hand is warm on his shoulder, like a stray ray of sunshine, delicately pulling him towards her as he comes back amongst the furs and warmth of the bed.

"Me too" Hawke whispers, her voice breaking as she clears her throat, grimacing. Her arms are heavy around him, gathering him close and Fenris willingly drifts away for the moment, willingly closes his eyes and just breathes in. Slowly, slowly, slowly. In and out.

"I don't trust him," she mutters into his hair at some point, warm breath ghosting over his forehead as he embraces Hawke closer, careful of her wounds. He looks up at her face, at the worry lines encircling her eyes with violet shadows and Hawke looks down at him, brows scrunched up as she continues, "I don't know him anymore. Have I ever known him at all?"

Her eyes soften the longer Fenris looks into them. She finally closes them when he trails a hand up her cheek, caressing it. "Don't blame yourself." He says simply and she smiles that broken slanted smile he started seeing after Leandra died.

"We have to look out" she chokes at the words, tensing her jaw as she squeezes the hand still cupping her cheek. "We cannot let- we cannot have The Chantry business all over again."

"We won't."

"We'll kill him if he tries anything." There is finality to her words as she arches her head away from him to look at the door leading to the corridor and stairs, to warn Anders of his impending doom perhaps, even though he would not be able to hear the words.

And Fenris just nods, laying a weary head on her breast, because this is not what he envisioned once for Hawke and himself. None of this is.

They come downstairs an hour later or so, clad once again in armour and travelling cloaks. Anders is on his feet, running amongst the shelves of the storage, checking if everything relevant has been already taken.

He is eager to please, Fenris knows it as he comes to stand by the door, but at least this time Ander's fevered behaviour could be actually useful for once.

"Good thing you've sorted out your leg," Hawke swaggers into the room behind him, her eyes empty but smile shining in the lone light of the oil lamp, "would be a shame if you got trampled the first minute we come out of Kirkwall".

Anders freezes at her words and flashes a shy smile of his own. "Good thing you still had so many Lyrium potions. Saved me having to mop the floor from my blood all day."

"And we wouldn't like that, now would we." Hawke says brightly, brushing past him with rucksacks gripped tightly in both of her hands. She tries to make herself look busy for a moment, with Anders' eyes drilling into her back, and finally drifts away to the kitchen, stomping through the empty halls, "Maybe Bodahn left something behind, get ready for marching out."

Fenris stays behind, poised beside Anders, "What do you want me to do with these?" He asks, inclining his head at bunches of dried herbs still laying on the table, lavender's and chamomile's smell nauseating in the small room. Anders does not answer, his body still turned towards the exit Hawke took.

"Is this how's going to be?" he mutters, maybe more to himself than Fenris, but he still hears every word. Anders looks small all of the sudden, small and sad in his feathered robes and with his funny, straw-blond ponytail, and Fenris knows, he knows that it must hurt but this is his fault in the end. It is his fault, his choices made it all this difficult.

"Better watch what you are doing from now on" Fenris says softly. Anders looks at him fleetingly, his expression blank as Fenris taps his own neck, slowly moving his fingers in a circle till their draw an invisible noose around his throat. "Don't say I never warned you."

Anders chuckles, a heavy breath and a few mirthless noises, "You've never even pretended to like me. That's the only respectable thing in you." He stares down at his hands, picking at a stray thread protruding from his frayed sleeve. "Not pretending."

"I don't pity you. I never will, so stop your hysteria." Fenris steadies himself by the doorframe. "Your gloom has cost lives," he crosses his arms as the mage starts pacing anew, busying himself from listening, "actual lives, Anders! Do you not understand?"

"I know what I did" Anders mutters, running fingers through his greasy hair as he stops in front of a shelf, looking over the few left jars. He takes a deep breath before turning around, looking Fenris in the eye as he repeats, "I know what I did."

"Do you?" Fenris stares him down, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw aches, "Do you think Hawke believes that?"

"Shut up, just, just- SHUT. UP!" The mage throws one of the jars at him, Fenris easily sidestepping the throw and glass breaks into a myriad of pieces on the wall centimetres away from his head.

He curls his lip at Anders who is breathing heavily through his nose, his face becoming more blotchy pink the more he looks at him. "I will not let you blame us for this" Fenris utters softly, trying to shush the constant thumping of his heart in his ears. The mage's eyes flicker icy blue at his words but Fenris urges himself to calm down, to let him bite his hand instead of Hawke's.

He takes out one of Hawke's daggers, its curved blade shining coldly in the lamp's light as Fenris sticks it out in front of him. "Don't you dare try to blame her, don't even think about it."

Anders' face pales at this, his angry expression crumbling as his eyes dart away to the corridor. Fenris has the urge to turn around and see if maybe Hawke has come back, but the moment tears start streaming down the mage's face and he starts actually sobbing, he forgets about it. It is tough to look at Anders as he kneels and just cries, big fat tears of sorrow falling, his face not shadowed, nor hidden away by a hand or elbow. Fenris has always known the man to be much more free-spirited, more open about emotions and dreams than he was but this was… Different altogether.

He feels a pang of guilt as the man sobs louder, now digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. Fenris sheaths the weapon and conceals it in his boot. There are more sorrows ahead of them anyway, there are so many more difficulties and broken dreams ahead of them that this is no catastrophe by its own. Let him cry, for all the dreams he has closed on himself. Let him cry over the lives already broken and destroyed. Let him cry over the incoming war.

He opens his mouth to tell Anders to be ready in an hour to march, like Hawke has told them to, but thinks better of it. Instead, he slips away without a word, the sobs and the sound of glass breaking accompanying his lonely steps through the dark corridor.

Hawke has actually found additional food, dried meat and stale pies left in a concealed cupboard. They eat, waiting for Anders to finish taking his bearings and the silence is golden.

They hold hands under the table when he comes into the kitchen at last, eyes red-rimmed and lips puffy. He has a bundle dangling over his shoulder, one that smells faintly of herbs, and he sets it by his feet as he sits down opposite of them. They eat and drink, and once done, scan the location for any goods one last time.

"I thought we would be living here till we die," Hawke says quietly, her eyes downcast and shoulders hunched as they step outside into the milky dusk. She carries two rucksacks on her back, straight and mighty like a tree but her step is not springy as she looks at the emblem by the door, the heralding shield slashed at and the red markings torn. "Old and grumpy, and all too close to the Chantry."

"And to Danarius' old mansion." Fenris embraces her, still ever so careful of her ribs, and he sets his head on top of her shoulder. She moves hers so that their hair touch. "I thought our children would play here," he mutters bitterly, thinking how hard it is to be actually letting go of all of this. All the hopes, all the plans and schemes destroyed in such a short span of time.

Why everything that was so good, had to last for such a short while?

"Will we ever dream again like that?" Hawke breathes, her frame shaking in a silent sob, as her voice hitches like back in the bedroom. Her old bedroom. Their old bedroom. Once-upon-a-time, Hawke's mansion's bedroom. Hawke's mansion's in Kirkwall bedroom. "Because I don't know, Fenris, I just don't know, if we will ever be able to."

"Neither do I, Hawke. But we can try."

She turns in his embrace, facing him with that amused expression of hers, one brow quirked and a smile playing just at the corner of her mouth. "We can," she hooks her own arm around him, bringing their bodies closer till they are jointed at the hips, "and we will."

"Anywhere you want." Fenris plants a kiss on top of her nose, quick and more playful than many others they have shared before, and he knows, he knows that this memory is going to be the one he will hang onto in the future, one of the most bitter-sweet he has made so far. "Anywhere we come."

"Anywhere, just so that you are there with me." Hawke breaths with half-lidded eyes, kissing him back on the corner of his own smile, hot and weary but so precious in that one exact moment. Her eyes shine anew as they cling to each other for a long moment in the misty air of the morning, the grim of the battle all around them and the streets eerily silent with so many people already gone.

If they were not on the run in that exact time, Fenris would have thought that this is what books should be written about, the silly stories and epochs Varric so loved to talk about. This was the material legends were woven from.