AN: I know, I know, I said I wouldn't be writing any more longfic. And I didn't mean to, honest-I thought this was going to cap out much shorter than it did, but different themes cropped up than I expected and I felt like I had to see them through to the end. This fic also began life during an extremely stressful finals month, and as my coping mechanism for that stress is apparently to write the unhappiest things I can imagine, please be forewarned that this story is very dark and deals with extreme grief and despair (...as per usual, I suppose). I'm also playing with a few various formatting and chapter-length changes as a result, so please forgive any dust from my inexperienced construction.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy.

Warnings: Explicit physical and emotional torture with permanent ramifications.

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.

Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal…

—The Times are Nightfall, Gerard Manley Hopkins

-.-

when light grows less

-.-

Part One

—

In the end, everything happens because of this:

Hawke opens the window.

It is a cool night and the house is overwarm, and she is overwarm, and so without a thought she undoes the latch of the tall window in her study that overlooks her patch of herb garden, and she leans out her head just for a moment to glance at the clouding sky. "Going to rain," she murmurs to herself, glad for the break in humidity the impending shower will bring, and turns back to the sofa. "I'm sorry. Please continue."

Fenris throws her a moody glare and turns the page with far more force than necessary. "I don't see why you continue to choose such nonsense for these evenings. A book of recipes would have more value."

"And if you think Orana would give you her cookbook for you to get your pointy claw-marks all over, Varric's got a thaig to sell you. Besides," she adds, grinning, "you can't possibly think your education still takes precedence over my entertainment."

"Very little does, I've found," he says sourly.

That one stings. She had meant it as a joke, certain the months of the lessons they have worked through would prove the lie of it—but whether or not he means his acerbity, the sentiment is too close to the accusations he'd leveled at her one bitter night three years ago. Fenris lowers his eyes to the book again before the hurt shows on Hawke's face, and she turns swiftly to the bookcase beside the window to regain her composure, tugging a wrinkle from her short robe, curling her toes in her soft leather boots until the flush of embarrassment is gone. "Flames," she says eventually, proud of the steadiness in her voice, "you're in a mood tonight."

There is a long pause, and then Fenris sighs. "Forgive me," he says, and she can nearly hear his eyebrows knotting together. "I was thinking of—never mind."

Hawke glances over her shoulder at him, but though Fenris meets her gaze easily he clearly has no inclination of discussing the subject further. "Suit yourself," Hawke says at last, shrugging, and finds herself rewarded with a brief but genuine smile as she turns back to the books. "So if you don't care for tubers, how would you feel about fairy tales?"

"Children's stories?"

He sounds almost as disgusted at the thought of them as the cookbook, but Hawke pulls the thick, leather-bound volume from the shelf and blows the dust from its spine. "You've got to at least try it before you choke on your disdain, Fenris."

"I would be more willing had I not been caught by your treachery too many times before."

"Aveline thought the pamphlet would be very educational."

"It was a manual on how to care for a longsword. Apparently written for a child."

"The sharp end is for sticking. It doesn't get much more practical than that."

"Hawke."

She quirks an eyebrow but he is smiling again, amusement swallowing any rancor left in his voice. Hawke hefts the book in one hand, splays her other palm over the embossed title. "Well, Serah Scorn, if you can't be arsed to polish your longsword correctly, perhaps you'll enjoy reading about evil uncles being spitted on them."

Fenris opens his mouth—

—and an arrow drives suddenly and precisely through the back of Hawke's spread left hand.

For a moment there is only silence. She stares at it where it bursts from her skin, uncomprehending, the long ash shaft trembling ever-so-slightly from the force of the blow, the pale yellow fletching stirred by her breath—and then the pain comes, biting and bitter and cold, and she bends over her hand with a choking gasp.

She cannot even pull it free. The head of the arrow jabs through the far side of the book, pinning her to the stories between its pages; a wild hysterical voice in the back of her head shouts a gripping read! and can't put the book down! and somewhere even behind that there is Fenris's voice shouting something, saying—her name—but the agony swells sharp and fast and drowns out all sounds but her heartbeat pounding hard in her ears, drumming loud as a rabbit's and as fast. Then she is on the ground, on her knees, and she cannot remember if she fell or if Fenris pushed her down—but the book is crookedly propped on the point of the arrow scratching into her hardwood floor and her own quick breaths are hot on the backs of her fingers—

"Hawke!" snaps Fenris, and the sound of her name in his voice is enough to shake her from her stupor.

Get up—get up! She's been shot before, and wounded far worse than this—Hawke grits her teeth and grips the shaft of the arrow with her other hand, cracking a whip-thin line of flame along the ash-wood arrow. It takes a moment to catch—too long—and then finally it burns, orange flame licking down the smooth wood until it reaches the back of her hand. Two breaths more, a dozen heartbeats—and the shaft from skin to fletching is ash, fine and white and scattering as Hawke jerks her hand free with a curse.

But—there is something wrong with the ash. There is something wrong with her hand too, something deep and burning—but no time to worry about it, and clutching her wrist, Hawke spares only a glancing wish for her staff before she turns to the battle Fenris has waged behind her back.

Two armor-clad figures are already dead at the foot of the open window, an elf and a burly human woman in heavy plate, their armor marked on the left shoulder with a pale yellow half-moon. Even as Hawke darts forward Fenris drops a third man to join them, blood on his gauntlets and spattered across his face. Healing magic surges behind her eyes and roars down her arm to her wounded palm, but the skin is slow to respond and again she has that feeling that something is wrong—

"Behind!" Fenris shouts, and Hawke whirls on her heel as the door to the study splinters open. Three more armored men stand there, naked blades in hand, and more close behind; Hawke takes two quick steps and flings out her hand in an arc, reaching for ice—

Something splits in her head—

And the thick spears of ice she'd called emerge as nothing more than a sudden gasp of white smoke.

For an instant she cannot breathe, stunned beyond words—she tries again, pulling violently on the Fade-gold twist of magic in her heart, and this time it gives her even less. One of the men in the doorway pushes forward, his sword lifted; a woman in a full-mask helmet darts under his arm with daggers in each hand, racing towards her like the Void itself snaps at her heels. Fenris is still somewhere behind her, fighting, the room ringing with steel on steel and the sharp cries of landed blows.

No magic—and now she recognizes the heaviness of magebane in her blood, smells the acrid bite of its scent in the wound left by that first arrow. She should have known with the way the wood refused to catch—she should have realized—

Hawke falls back, then plants her good hand solidly on the arm of the sofa and vaults over the back of it. The high distant whine of a whistle is her only warning; she throws herself forward and another yellow-fletched arrow buries itself in an oak table standing by the door. Hawke spins to face her pursuers again, gropes behind her—she should have gone towards the fire, the poker—but as the man with the sword advances her fingers close around the fat bottle of wine Fenris had brought her once as an offering of peace.

She sucks in a breath, staring into the man's impassive brown eyes—then she hurls the bottle forward with her whole strength. It catches him square in the face and shatters; wine spatters in a blood-red spray over the light sofa and he drops like a log, eyes wide and unseeing. The woman with the daggers leaps sideways to avoid the falling glass and tries to go around the sofa's far end, but Fenris is there to meet her, snarling, and though there are two more close at his back and he is bleeding from a deep cut to his forehead he does not hesitate as he drives his arm elbow deep through the woman's chest. She shrieks in agony and drops her daggers, wrapping her hands around his wrist as if in supplication—

And then, as suddenly as lightning strikes through spreading silver wires, every lyrium brand on his skin blows light at once.

Fenris's muscles tense iron-hard, ridged with pain; his head goes back like claws have dragged him by his hair to his toes, his spine arching under the agony. The woman in his grasp lets out a soft, sudden sigh and goes limp as his hand clenches involuntarily around her heart. Even dampened by magebane Hawke can feel the oily licking of blood magic on her skin, blood magic on Fenris; it is an easy thing then to forget her own pain, to forget even the fresh warriors pushing through her open door. All that matter is Fenris, his mouth open, gasping—his spine twisting—his weight dropping to the floor, nerveless, boneless, every inch of his skin alight. Four steps—two—

And as the blood mage slips in through the open window, panting, grinning, a gloved hand fists hard in Hawke's hair, and a thin serrated blade comes to rest gently, point-first, over her heart.

"Stop," says the man holding her, but the word means nothing for how little attention she gives it. Fenris is on his back, eyes closed, lyrium still flickering with sporadic, unsteady light and she can't see if he's breathing—

"Let go," she snarls, and yanks hard on the wrist that bears the knife. "Maker take you, you son of a bitch—Fenris—"

He stirs at the sound of his name and for a moment Hawke's heart begins to beat again; then the blood mage kneels and wraps his hand around Fenris's throat in clear threat and Hawke jerks against the fingers fisted in her hair with a choked, inarticulate cry of frustration.

"He lives," says the man into her ear, cold and impatient, "as long as you cooperate. Stop."

Hawke tenses—but Fenris's eyes open, then, a sliver of dazed green behind the blood smearing over his forehead, and she forces herself to be still. "If you've come to rob the place," she says tightly, "you've picked the wrong house. There's nothing of value here."

He gives a short, unamused laugh and tightens his hand in her hair. "How little you know, Champion."

The title stings like this, but there is little she can do with Fenris still struggling for consciousness—and even as he drags himself to his side another woman in heavy plate comes around behind him and heaves him roughly to his knees, twists his wrists up behind his back with a sharp movement until he starts with the pain. His eyes fly open, full wide and furious, and when they land on Hawke where she is pinned she sees fear, too—

"That's right," the woman says behind him, and when he tugs she tightens her grip on his arms until he winces. "Your cooperation would be…beneficial to you both."

Hawke clenches her jaw so hard her teeth creak. "It seems you have my attention."

"I said cooperation," the woman reminds her, and the blood mage still kneeling by Fenris lets out a harsh laugh as he grimaces. "We're wasting time."

Hawke's eyes flick left and then right, counting the number of fighters arrayed in her once-cosy study: six to her left, including two mages; seven to her right and at least two behind, she thinks, though she cannot turn to see them, all of them marked with those pale half-moons—

And then the man holding her twists the blade-tip just a hairsbreadth into her skin and says, "We have a buyer for you, Champion."

His grip in her hair is too tight to stare at him; she settles for a disbelieving bark of laughter. "A what?"

Fenris snarls something acidic in Arcanum, throwing himself against the woman's grasp, but the man holding Hawke slides the serrated edge of the blade to the base of her throat and Fenris grits his teeth, subsiding. His eyes burn.

"We don't have time for this," the blood mage says, his voice softer than Hawke expects. "Just kill the elf and let's go."

"Fine," the woman snaps, reaching for her belt, pulling free a thin knife. Hawke stiffens—Fenris glares, unafraid, but she can see the shadows behind his anger deepen as the woman places the knife's point at the nape of his neck, angles it for a driving thrust upward, draws in a quick breath as her arm tenses—

"Wait!" Hawke bursts out, panic ripping up her spine. "Wait. Wait. Don't."

The woman looks to Hawke's holder; Fenris tenses, uncertainty bleeding through his fury. "Hawke—"

"Don't," she snaps, her heart racing, her mind moving even faster, and she wrenches her head back, looks to the man holding her. "Let him live."

His lips curl into a smile. "Persuade me."

Her answer is the obvious one, the stupid one, the one Varric sneers at in other people's work as forced melodrama—but it doesn't matter, it doesn't, neither Fenris's pride nor her own able to check the fear undamming her voice. "I'll go without a fight. You swear to me he won't be hurt and I'll—go with you."

"Hawke, no!"

Fenris's voice is as agonized as she's ever heard him but she doesn't dare to look; her captor narrows his eyes, gauging her honesty, and she knows the truth is written in her face but if this is the thing to save Fenris she cannot regret it—

"Fine," he says at last, and he throws out his free hand to the handful of dead bodies scattered on her floor, to the silent soldiers still arrayed around them, waiting, watching. "A dozen witnesses to your oath, Champion. Break it at the elf's peril."

"Fine," she says, a cracking echo, and watches three of them bind Fenris's arms behind his back with heavy iron shackles soldered into one piece and strip him of his armor to leave him in his leathers. They drag him to his feet until he stands on his own, swaying slightly with the effort and still bleeding from his forehead, the lyrium in his skin dead and thin from its draining.

His voice, though, does not waver as he says, one last time, "Hawke." Then he says more quietly, only for her, "Do not do this."

The expression on his face drives through her heart like a nail—but she can find nothing at all to say, no other recourse without her magic, and when one of the men forces a strip of cloth between Fenris's teeth to gag him she grits her teeth and does not look away, because this is what her struck deal has brought them both; this is what her friendship has given him.

Champion, she thinks bitterly, wincing as too-tight ropes knot around her own wrists, swallowing through the heavy creeping burn of magebane in her veins. Her pierced left hand throbs with each heartbeat, slicking her fingers with her own blood.

Her holder jerks her towards the door, and in her periphery she sees Fenris, bound, gagged, stumble after her.

Helpless.