AN: And here we are at the end of another one. This time I know better than to say this is my last one for a while; in fact, I have another, already-completed (though shorter) story off at the beta even as I type this, because I will never be able to shake these two out of me. Still, I'm so glad you've stuck around to the end, and I hope it provides some satisfaction after all the suffering and angst that came before. :)

As always, thank you for reading.

It is unequivocally not Orana's habit to listen at Hawke's doors. Once she would have without question: in her mistress's house in Minrathous, where a word caught here might mean a slave's life there, where she might keep herself small and silent and in shadow, unnoticed between marble statuettes and bright gilded robes. But Hawke wears no gilt and there are no marble statuettes besides, and as her years here have taught her not to fear so has she allowed that skill to lapse, to wither without notice or care beneath the warmer friendship Hawke had offered her in its place.

But now, passing by the open door to the main hall on her way to the kitchens, she finds herself arrested by a woman's low laugh and a murmured word—the laughter her mistress's, and the answer so deep it can only be Fenris. Orana swallows, feeling her cheeks color as she pauses just before the door, her fingers tightening on the ceramic vase she holds. She should not linger here. This is clearly private, clearly a moment that needs no intruder, only—

Only it has been so long since she has heard her mistress laugh.

As if on cue Hawke laughs again, and this time it accompanies the soft ringing of leather through a buckle. "How dextrous," her mistress murmurs, loud enough that Orana cannot miss the teasing note to her voice. "I should have you do all my buckles."

"Flattery does you little credit," Fenris tells her drily, and a second strip of leather shirrs into place.

"That's rather the point, isn't it? All credit to you, you lovely, talented elf with your lovely ten fingers. Do hurry, won't you? We were supposed to be there twenty minutes ago."

Fenris makes a short, pointed noise of indignation at both the compliments and the sentiment. "Had you taken more care the first time, the harness would not be so tangled now."

The harness—oh, Orana realizes. For the mistress's hook. She has seen it, the complicated tangle of soft leather straps and little silver buckles meant to hold the elegant worked-metal hook in place. It had surprised her that something so beautifully simple required such effort to be useful, to be made strong enough and secure enough to grasp and pull, a full handful of leather bandings held in place beneath the mistress's—oh, Orana thinks again, and feels her cheeks heat a second time. If Fenris adjusts the harness—then the mistress is not, at the moment, wearing her shirt.

"But then you would miss all this," the mistress says, and the laugh she gives now is soft and throaty and without embarrassment. If Orana could trust herself to move without noise and without interruption, she would, but now—

"A loss indeed," Fenris says, his voice lower, and richer, and then Orana hears the smooth slide of hands on skin. Then a creak, as if weight has shifted on the low wooden bench, and a hushed breath, and the soft unmistakable sound of one mouth touching to another's. Hawke hums a note of approval.

Then suddenly, Fenris's whisper: a word in Arcanum Orana has never in her life expected to hear in that voice, in that tone. Orana closes her eyes, lifts the cool ceramic of the vase she holds to one flushing cheek, then to the other. She had not—had not known him capable of such endearments.

But the embrace does not last, and soon enough she hears the rustle of clothing and Hawke's chuckle, muffled in her shirt then drawing clear again as she returns herself to decency. Orana straightens, steps back a few paces and clears her throat, fanning her cheeks quickly, and this time when she reaches the open doorway she does not hesitate in the rounding of it.

"Mistress," she says pleasantly, crossing to place her vase on the long table across from the bench, and Hawke throws her a cheerful smile as she tucks her disheveled shirt into her trousers. Fenris nods without quite meeting her eyes, preoccupied with the silver hook that has turned a degree too far on the mistress's amputated arm, and with a careful twist he sets it straight again.

"There," he says, satisfied, and after a short inspection Hawke throws her gold-and-silver arm over his shoulder, taking pains to keep the hook's sharp edge clear as she pulls him to meet her. Fenris does not flinch at its weight, at the silver shining down its elegantly tapered curve. Neither does Hawke.

"What would I do without you?" she asks him, grinning, and drops a peck on his lips before drawing away.

He catches her metal-bound wrist with his hand as it drops between them, enclosing it in as much a caress as Orana has ever seen him indulge in. "Go about with twisted straps forever."

"A tragedy indeed," Hawke agrees, and winks at Orana when she laughs. "Anyway, let's go. Varric's already going to tease us for the entire afternoon."

Fenris rolls his eyes, reaching for a small, clinking bag of sovereigns on the bench beside Hawke without loosing her hand. "Then hurrying will make little difference."

Hawke laughs again, bright and unweighted, and Fenris, just as easily—smiles at her. Orana looks down, blinks hard. She had forgotten he could smile like that.

She had not realized, until this moment, how very much she has missed it.

—

It is raining. Has been raining all day, cool and grey and steady as little drumbeats marking out the hours. It is not so dark now as it was this morning, the early afternoon sun almost, almost daring to pierce the clouds here and there, but even so Hawke cannot seem to mind the weather. She is too comfortable here with her hooked hand in her lap, leaning against Fenris's leg and the armchair he sits in as he reads in her study, the remnants of her current efforts scattered around her on the Orlesian carpet: jars with difficult lids laid open, strings and laces tied in clumsy knots, papers folded neatly and less neatly as her care gave way with her patience.

Her notes lie on the desk under the still-open window, placed neatly beside a pen and a fresh copy of Anders's manifesto. The top few papers have wrinkled with raindrops gone astray; at some point a half-idea of fetching both notes and manifesto while closing the window had fluttered through Hawke's mind, but the rain has made her lazy and Fenris's thigh is warm and firm under her cheek, and despite the dampened pages Hawke cannot muster the willingness to rise. Instead she stretches out her bare feet, crossing them at her trouser-clad ankles, and readjusts her back against the chair so that her weight is not so heavy on Fenris's knee.

He turns a page behind her head, lifts his glass of wine to his mouth: a gift from her to him, purchased to replace the bottle lost in the first moment of her magebane-driven weakness. The room falls quiet again save the soft, constant drizzling outside, and without meaning to, Hawke closes her eyes.

She dreams of Nys. She knows from the first that it is a dream and a shallow one besides, some deep distant part of her still aware of the sound of rain, of soft leather beneath her cheek—but that knowledge does not make the elf woman kneeling over her less real or less terrifying.

"I've found you," Nys murmurs, low and throaty, and slides her left palm across Hawke's cheek, a mockery of a caress. The golden half-moon emblazoned on the chest-guard of her armor is bright as glass, burning without heat.

Hawke—cannot move. "You're dead."

Nys laughs. "And you aren't?"

"No."

"I took your magic. I took your elf. I took you."

"None of those are lost to me." A truth she knows even as she says it—

The sudden breeze is shockingly cold in her face, heavy and damp with the promise of rain. Hawke fists her hands. Both hands—ten fingers, knuckles knotted white, thumbs pressed together in her lap, whole and without flaws.

Nys smiles. "Aren't they?"

"No," Hawke says again, and without straightening Nys looks behind her where the cave-mouth yawns, dark and too full of muted screams, thick with the smell of rot and blood, a flat unsanded table laid lit in its center like an altar. Hawke reaches out for it without knowing why—but there is no flesh on her outstretched hand: only bone, ash-charred white.

Her breath comes very thin in her nose, too weak to pass the lump of hot horror in her throat. "This isn't real."

"You think dreams don't matter?" Nys's hand moves further along her cheek and into her hair, and slowly the fingers begin to twist, tighten, snarl. "This part of your heart will be mine for the rest of your life. I matter. My son matters."

Hawke tries to pull back, tries to turn her head away, but Nys's grip is too tight and the water rising around her too thick to swim through, and she can only lift her chin and try to swallow air before it is gone. "I won't let you haunt me forever. I survived you. I will survive you."

Nys drags Hawke up to meet her, face moon-bright, dark cropped hair glittering with rain, eyes maddened with flame. Behind her, the rough-wood table begins to burn. "The circle is closed, Champion."

She tries to speak, tries to shape for the third time the word no, but the table is alight and Nys's eyes are afire and her hand is burning, burning, burning—

Hawke jerks awake.

She has made no sound, no startled cry; it is not until her eyes fly open that she feels Fenris shift against her, his warm palm coming to rest carefully on her shoulder, the back of her neck. "Hawke?"

Oh, but she is sick of this.

Hawke reaches up, gripping his hand just for a moment, just to remind herself of what is true and what is not true—and then she pushes herself up on shaky legs, drives a swallow through the knot in her throat, forces herself across the room until she has her hand and hook alike flat on the desk beneath the still-open window. Her fingers tighten until the nails scrape into the grained wood, until the hook's curve dents its surface bluntly, gripping for more than sanity's sake as she drags down breaths of wet rain-thick air.

Fenris does not ask her if it is another nightmare. She knows he knows it is; he has witnessed too many of them the last month since their return, has held her through too many nights when she could not see through her glass-darkened memories. Instead his book closes, a quiet thump, and then feet as bare as hers pad softly across the carpet behind her. Hawke blinks, staring down at the top page of Anders's manifesto where it sits beside her silver hook, blindly finding a place where raindrops have smudged the ink to an illegible mess. A sensible person should not be afraid of—

But fear is so rarely sensible.

Her name comes again, low, measured as the tread of a booted heel, and when Fenris's fingers flit across the small of her back she shudders head to toe. Her shoulders are crooked like this where she is bent, her right higher than her left, and when Fenris's arms come around her it is a graceless fitting together of two unlike pieces, each too rough and sharp-cornered to meet without pain.

Ah, but Hawke knows pain, now, and understands better than she did that not all discomfort leads only to scars. Sometimes there is pain with growth, too.

Her hand fumbles its way around Fenris's at her waist; then her other arm comes up too, holding him against her as best she can, straightening until his temple comes to rest beside her own. How stupid that after all of this, that after everything she has suffered she finds that she simply yearns to be held, to be allowed to bend and diminish and rest solely on someone else's strength, just for a little while. She has held on for so long, longer than she ever thought she might need to—now, more than anything, she longs to be told to let go.

Fenris does not tell her so, not with words. But his arms are firm and his strength enough to hold her through more than just these nightmares, and when he does not pull away she finds herself yielding, little by little, folding back into his support every part of her held too-long stiff from fear and sorrow. He says nothing, taking all that she can bear and more, and when Hawke at last lets out a long, bone-emptying sigh he only pulls her closer to him, as if he understands, as if he knows what weight she has given him to carry and does not mind the burden.

Hold on. Her father's voice, and Fenris's voice, and Carver's voice. Until it's over, sister.

It is time, she thinks, distant and clear as the Chantry bells chiming dawn, to let go.

"Thank you," she tells him when she can speak again; then she adds, her mouth twisting at the irony, "I'm sorry."

His voice rumbles gently down her spine. "There is no need to apologize."

"There never is, is there?"

Fenris lets out a soft laugh. "So it would seem."

"Mm." Hawke leans her head against his for a long minute, looking at the rain where it trembles down both sides of the paned glass. Then she murmurs, "We've never really talked about it, have we?"

"You—had no wish to discuss it."

Hawke laughs despite herself. "Somehow I feel like that should be the other way around," she tells him, but the humor dies as quickly as it comes, memory seeping up in spite of her efforts, a stone cistern too deep to fathom. "Fenris," she says, turning her head so that her mouth touches his cheek, tightening her hand on his. "I never asked. Are you all right?"

Like this she can see the lines deepen at the corners of his mouth; like this she can see the shadow fall across his green eyes. Such a foolish question—and yet his voice is steady, unfaltering. "I expected to watch you die in front of me."

The shudder rolls through again, as much at the bleakness of the thought as the knowledge that she had expected the same thing. "I wanted to by the end," she admits. Kill me. "It was easier than being helpless."

He looks at her at that, but the question in his eyes has no answer she can give and she looks away. He starts to speak, checks himself, then says roughly, "Less helpless than I."

"You?" Hawke snorts, turning in Fenris's arms so that she can look him full in the face. "You're the only reason I'm still alive, Fenris."

"You would have found a way to escape."

"From a locked cell, when I couldn't stand, when I couldn't cast, half-mad with fever. Oh, yes, my chances were excellent."

"Had I not been there to be used against you—"

"I would have died," she says flatly. "You saved my life."

His lips press together. "And you mine. Without your word at the start—it would have been over quickly."

"So much for anyone owing anyone. It all washes out in the end."

"Hawke—"

"Fenris," she says, her hand clenching into his collar, impatient to hide her frustration, her grief, "this isn't a—a child's game. We don't have to keep spinning round who saved whom or who owes the other more. It's not—" she makes a short, sharp gesture between them with her hook, struggling for words. "Love like this breaks that sort of circle."

It is not until his lips part, not until his eyes go wide that Hawke realizes precisely what she's said. The rain pattering on the sill is the only noise for a long moment, both of them staring at each other; then Hawke lets out a breath, straightens, meets his gaze levelly. She had not meant to say it like this, not yet, but—it is true enough. No reason to hide it, she tells herself in justification and reassurance both, and a lie to recant, and so rather than do either she lifts her chin and waits. Three years have gone by already; a minute more will make no difference now.

His mouth softens. His eyes soften too, and his whole frame bends towards her, just a little, and then his hands glide up the bones of her back and her shoulders to come to rest palms flat against her neck, thumbs to her jaw, fingers catching in her hair. His forehead bumps against hers, gently, and then he says so low the rain itself seems to hush to hear it, "Hawke. I am yours."

She kisses him. Twice, hard, neither graceful nor kind, and then she wraps both arms around his neck and pretends she is not trembling. Fenris catches her up, pulls her closer against him, his mouth in her hair and his heart thudding in his chest just as rough and quick as hers.

"Don't say that," she mumbles into his shoulder, half-laughing, half-choking on tears. "I'll die after all and then what'll they say about suffering building character?"

Her hair flutters as Fenris's warm chuckle drifts across her ear; then he bends nearer so that his lips touch her cheek and he murmurs it again. And a third time, even more quietly, more tenderly: three words and three years' longing folded into each of them, touching the sore hidden places of her heart where even Anders's healing could not reach, a salve for each bruise left by regret and sorrow and too much wasted time.

They are wasting so much time—

Her lips find his again. These kisses are more intent, more thorough; his mouth opens under hers and she laughs, pressing closer, stoking the coal-dim embers in her belly into something hotter. "Fenris," she says between kisses, his teeth dragging over her lower lip, "have you—ah—do you have to be anywhere this afternoon?"

His hands still on her back, just for an instant. Then he says, "No, Hawke," and that is enough.

Contrary to Isabela's insinuations, there had been a reason for waiting. Between the fever and the lingering injuries Hawke had at first been too weak, and then they both of them had been too angry beneath the hurt, and by the time the anger had been lanced it had seemed a coarse thing to force to happen. So they had waited, and said nothing, and now—but now they are here—and Hawke has no intentions of letting another second slip by her without action.

"Do you," she asks against his mouth, hooking two fingers into his collar, feeling lyrium thrum wild and strong under her knuckles, "want to stay for a while?"

Fenris laughs again, dark and inviting, only the briefest catch of breath giving him away. He tells her, "Longer than that."

Hawke is not entirely sure how they make it upstairs. She remembers his hand in hers, his feet so close behind her own she nearly trips; she remembers wires of anxiety and desire alike twisting together in her stomach to leave her giddy. Somehow the door closes behind them, somehow the lock clicks—and then Fenris is there before her, smiling, in her bedroom, cool grey rain-shivered light from the window draping over him until his edges blur and his hair silvers and she can hardly believe this is real.

"Hawke," he murmurs, his fingers drawing up the lines of her throat—and that is real enough to lodge her heart high behind her ribs where it races shallow and quick. His hands slide into her hair, displacing Orana's careful tie at the nape of her neck; the length of it falls black and loose around her shoulders, and Fenris pulls his fingers through it in a long, slow motion. She closes her eyes.

Then Fenris's mouth falls over hers, and Hawke does not think of her hair again.

She has missed him so much. Not just like this, pressed full against each other, his hands at the small of her back, her arms both flesh and metal around his neck—no, rather it is this easy confidence he shows so rarely that stops up her voice, that makes her stomach flip, the bare unhidden light in his eyes growing bolder as he strips away his own careful defenses, as he lets her pry back his armored walls. Her fingers drift down the muscles of his stomach, press there; he snatches a breath from her mouth, a deep, startled noise escaping him without warning, and Hawke laughs.

"Temptress," he says, his voice husky, and without warning his palms drag up her waist, snagging her shirt, hot even through the fabric and maddeningly slow. He brushes his thumbs against the sides of her breasts and Hawke lets herself sigh, arching into the touch, wanting more and wanting at the same time not to rush this, not yet. It has taken long enough for them to reach this point together; she has little wish to lose the rest of it in a frenzy of untempered passion.

And Fenris understands, if the corner of his mouth curving up is any indication. He does not rush her; he does not rush himself, and for several minutes there is no sound in the room save the rustle of cloth and his mouth on her mouth and rain on glass. Then—somehow—Hawke finds her back against her bedpost and Fenris's thigh between her legs, and—somehow—her fingers have made their way to the top clasp of his jerkin. He pulls back just enough to see her face, searching her eyes—but Hawke is not weak and Hawke is not helpless, and she will see the Void in Thedas before she lets herself be defeated by a little piece of iron and steel.

The clasp to Fenris's shirt—a lock on a cell in a forgotten cave. No matter. No difference.

The clasp comes apart between her thumb and forefinger. Hawke grins, triumphant, and Fenris kisses her again; while her mouth is still open to his the second, third, and fourth toggles click open, baring his chest past his ribs, and Hawke does not hesitate before sliding her hand under the thick fabric, feeling the once-dead lyrium ridge and shiver at her touch, watching how Fenris's eyelids flicker as she drags her fingernails lightly down his naked chest.

Oh, but she wishes she had two hands.

But one serves her well enough, or enough for this purpose, anyway—the last handful of clasps come free without catching, Fenris's shirt hanging open neck to navel, and when she pushes at it he helps shrug himself free until the thing falls to the floor without a second thought. Then he is on her again, in her arms, her hand and hook's curve alike roaming over the skin laid bare to her, testing with her fingertips and her blunted forearm the places where his firm muscles move beneath his skin, where the bones of his spine bend him so perfectly against her. His hands go to the hem of her shirt and she laughs at his sudden, awkward pause; he snorts at her and at himself, leaning away, and his whole back ripples under her hand as he pulls the shirt over her head.

Hawke straightens, letting her head fall back against the bedpost. Fenris has gone wholly still, her shirt dangling loosely in one hand, his eyes roaming from scar to scar to scar on her bared chest and stomach and shoulders between the leather straps of her hooked harness. He had seen her without her shirt before, briefly, when she'd tangled her harness straps, but then his focus had been on the leather and not on her—not like this. No breastband to hide her, here, now—Orana had been busy this morning and Hawke cannot fasten them one-handed—no shame but what onetime helplessness has brought her. As if in a daze, Fenris touches the pockmark at the base of her neck where the head of Nys's spear had driven through, the knot on her rib where Nys's mage had healed it crooked, the tough, bumpy patch on the inside of her right forearm where a Tide had once pressed a yellow-gold coal.

Hawke, beaten, broken; hawk pinioned, wing torn away to keep it from flying.

Please, Fenris. Don't pity me.

His hand lingers on the new-growing calluses on her shoulder where the leather harness for her cuff tightens. She waits and he runs his thumb over them, gently, and then without a word he bends and presses his mouth to her skin there. Hawke sucks in a breath despite herself and feels him smile, and when his teeth close delicately on her shoulder she cannot keep back the low, throaty moan that slips free. Fenris smiles again, moving to press his lips to the place where her neck meets her shoulder, and to the underside of her jaw, and to the skin beneath her ear.

She cups his cheek with her palm, holding him in place; then in as much a test of her own strength as of his she brings her other hand to meet it, her hook, the cool metal stark and silver against his cheek. He closes his eyes and she finds herself holding her breath, unsure, unable to stop herself now that she has started this between them—but Fenris's hand comes up, slow and deliberate, to press against her hook, holding its curve to the bone of his cheek, holding her against him as if she belongs there.

And then he opens his eyes and he looks at her, and the heat and the want that burns in him unchecked, that he does not even try to hide from her—knocks the breath from her chest.

"Oh, damn," Hawke breathes, her left arm sliding tight around Fenris's neck to hold him close as she can get him. Her right hand grapples with the laces of his trousers, the knot suddenly too formidable for fingers that shake so badly as hers. She is gratified to find Fenris little more graceful as he tries to free her from her own ties, though his inelegance is due as much to her inability to keep her hips from rolling against his as his own too-eager hands. Still, her laces come loose at last—and before she can string two thoughts together his fingers have already slipped beneath her waistband, pushing down, incautious and impatient until she stands in nothing but her smalls and strap-bound hook.

"Easy," Hawke says, laughing, gasping, the words fighting free between kisses. The carved wood of the bedpost is stiff under her spine, cool on the backs of her thighs even through the wire-wrapped scars that lace around them several times over. "There's no—rush. No reason to—oh, shit, Fenris. Help me with this."

"With—?" he groans, fingers tensing on her hip between scar-ridges, clearly distracted by her teeth closing lightly around the tip of his ear, but Hawke yanks the trailing ends of the knot at his waist and he forces his eyes open again.

"Not that I couldn't do it eventually," she tells him, hardly knowing what she says, "but if you'd like to expedite the process…" Fenris manages some sort of response—but she is more focused on the strong slender fingers working between hers, avid and tearing at the knot as hers had been until the thing comes loose at last. She means to rid him of his trousers wholesale—but somehow his mouth catches hers instead, his tongue pressing on her bottom lip, and for some time Hawke forgets entirely the reason she'd been so irked by the knot to begin with.

Soon enough, though, the rhythmic press of his hips against her thigh reminds her, and the gold-sharp heat pooling insistently in the pit of her stomach reminds her, and before Hawke can muster another time-wasting thought she has hooked her fingers into his loosened waistband, taken two quick steps sideways, and yanked him down above her on the bed.

To his credit, surprise flashes over Fenris's face only an instant before he recovers himself. Bracing his hands on either side of her head—and she spares herself a flash of envy; no mimicry of that for her unless she wishes to play the hunchback—he drags a knee to the rumpled bedspread between her thighs, sliding it upward—inward—

Hawke throws her head back into the coverlet with a thick laugh. "Maker, Fenris. If you leave again I may actually kill you."

He goes still at that, a momentary flash of pain in his eyes as sudden and startling as lightning on a clear day. Then he lowers himself to one elbow and puts his mouth to hers, slow and searching and without fear, and says, "That will not happen, Hawke. I swear it."

"What of Danarius?"

As soon as the question leaves her lips Hawke regrets it. Lust-stricken, love-addled idiot. To bring up that bastard here of all places, now of all times—

But Fenris does not hesitate, does not pull away, does not check his fingers from where they slide over the buckled leather straps at her shoulder, her collarbone, undoing them one by one. He does not hurry even when she whispers his name to urge him on, even when he slips the last strap loose, even when he lifts the cuff and hook free from the abrupt end of her forearm in one piece and drops both them and her undone harness to the floor. He holds her arm, meets her eyes, presses the ridged scar-seam that lines the end of it to the place on his chest where his heart thunders; then he says, quietly, "Nothing he could do would be worse than the thought of losing you again."

Well, Hawke thinks, closing her eyes as if that might check the thunder of her heart, as if that might keep the lump-hard sob from her throat. "Good enough," she says, or means to say, but there is only room enough for a whisper between them, and when Fenris moves his mouth to her breast there is no space even for that.

They take their time after this. Rainfall still taps on the window-glass, lighter than before but no less steady; shadows of water on glass, thrown by what dim daylight seeps through the clouds, play over his skin and hers to dapple them both. Soft cool light shimmers through the lyrium that curls over Fenris's back, catching here and there in little iridescent gleams as he shifts above her, as she runs her fingers and her forearm over his skin, both of them careful, thorough, rediscovering the forgotten things and replacing the memories of the tortured places. He goes for the burns, the knife-cuts, the unstraightened bones; his body has fewer scars for her to cherish, but she makes do with the thin pale line above his eyebrow and the still-tender knot above his heart where his lyrium had been so savagely torn away.

He slides her smalls from her hips. She helps him from his trousers with hand and feet alike, shuddering, feeling him shudder against her. He helps her lean back against the pillows, kneeling between her legs; he bends to kiss her as she trails her hand down the jumping muscles of his stomach and lower, muffling his bitten oath in her mouth.

"Sorry," Hawke murmurs, laughter unchecked in her voice, "I'm only half as good with my hands as I used to be."

"Save those for Isabela," Fenris tells her tightly, brow creased, eyes closed—then she slowly twists her hand upward, and he says nothing at all.

After all this time, it is intoxicating to see Fenris like this: his lips parted, his hips working against her hand, his breath hot on her throat—his fingers shaking as they stroke her cheek, his voice thick and roughened and tender as he says her name. She does not stop her hand, even when he curls forward into her, even when he curses again into the hollow of her throat. For so long she had dreamed—and then she had feared—and now she is drunk on intimacy, on love, on this heady secret glimpse of his heart. Lyrium-light flickers down his chin, his spine, the fierce-tensed muscles of his calves and heels and toes where they dig into her coverlet.

But her efforts can last only so long—and soon Fenris catches her wrist in his hand, dragging it away, dragging her hips up as he leans forward to meet her. "Hawke," he says again, a ragged plea—and when she rolls the rest of the way to join him he groans like a man struck some great blow. Hawke herself is little better. Despite her desire and her willingness it has been so long—too long—and at first the ache is too great to be called pleasure, but as she arches her back his hand comes between them, cleverer than hers but just as eager, and in a matter of moments the pain begins to give way to something warmer, a certain rhythm matched, smooth, unselfish in the sharing of it.

"Just like this," Hawke whispers when they find it, her fingers along his jaw, his ear, his hand on her breast. Just like this—memory and this moment of one piece, unsevered—and it is perfect.

He smiles, gentle enough her heart aches, and leans down so that his lips glance across her cheek. "Yours, Hawke," he tells her again, low and rumbling like a river undammed, turned true.

She wishes—but she kills that useless thought before it can take root. Instead she tests the difference between her right hand and her left, marveling at the sensation of lyrium sparking to life under the rub of her skin. Her fingertips are more sensitive than the scar-thickened flesh of her left arm, of course—and yet the change seems even greater than before, the tactile scrape of her fingernails across Fenris's shoulder so different—and no better, and no worse—than the sensation of her forearm dragging down his side, wrapping along his warm, muscle-firm back, broad and bold and so altered from before that what she once knew seems nothing but a dream painted with Fade.

Hawke finds herself content to leave it a dream. After all, her present reality improves on every piece of it.

Still, even like this, they do not hurry. The end will come regardless; like this Hawke feels no need to rush, no driving frantic pound of blood in her ears. Instead she is content to lie back in the pillows as Fenris leans over her, caging her with his arms, the both of them bound to this place and to each other by nothing more than choice. Fenris touches her cheek again, her temple. The red cloth band around his wrist brushes over her collarbone: a weightless shackle.

A choice. Just that. Nothing more.

In time, when she is close enough that her skin feels so tight she might burst, she reaches for him with both arms. There is no shame in the one shorter than the other, no hesitation in the baring of either of them, and Fenris's lips curve into a smile as he bends to her embrace, as she pulls herself up to meet him. She kisses the corner of that smile, grips his shoulder hard to keep her magic checked—and then she is coming, her head tossed back, her eyes closed, nothing in the world but where Fenris holds her. He does not take long to follow after that; his hands tense on her waist and his back bows so that his forehead is pressed to her jaw, his lips against her throat, lyrium flashing stark-white and blinding up his spine, and though she cannot understand the language he speaks in so unsteadily, so fervently, she knows the meaning of it matches her own heart.

After, they lie together for a long time. Not long enough for the rain to stop—no chance of that, Hawke thinks, though she minds little now and less even than before—but long enough for their sweat to cool, for Fenris to pull free without pulling away, his legs tangled with hers, his forehead against her cheek, his arm heavy over her waist. They talk of nothing, lazy and quiet, long stretches of silence between them now and then and Hawke does not mind this, either, because they have earned this peace together and they have known so little of it, lately, and to enjoy it now seems neither great sin nor great hardship. His fingertips ghost over her elbow, down her arm to the short stitch-scars and back again, tracing out a month and more of healing; she closes her eyes and feels how his chest moves when he is pleasantly tired, breathing in when he does, breathing out when he does.

"Should you rest?" he asks eventually, soft and steady as the rain on the window.

"Soon," she says, true enough; but because it is also true she says, "But not yet. A little longer."

He snorts; she smiles, rolling her eyes, and pushes herself higher on the pillows. Fenris grumbles without words at the motion, too sated, too weary for more, and when Hawke leans across him to fetch the thick, leather-bound book from her bedside table he lifts his head to let her. Somehow she doesn't make it quite upright again; somehow his head comes to rest on her naked stomach instead, heavy and comforting and tickling where his hair falls over her breast, his eyes half-lidded as she strokes her fingers through his hair.

The book lies at his shoulder where it landed, the arrow-pierced cover fallen open to bare the rose-embellished title page of a book of children's stories.

Fenris lifts his hand, touches his longest finger to the place where the leather juts inward, where her left palm had once been pinned. "You chose this?"

"I had to do something while I couldn't walk," she tells him. His head shifts so that his long pointed ear rests just beneath her heart; her fingers drift through his hair again, slow and tender and fond, the dear-won prerogative of a lover. "Would you like me to read to you?"

He laughs, a noiseless movement against her chest, and turns to the first page. "I enjoy listening to you."

"Flatterer," she says, lifting from the pillows just enough to press a kiss to his temple. He laughs again, turning his head so that he can look at her, and Hawke cannot check the quick upswelling surge of love that pricks the backs of her eyes.

Nys was wrong, she thinks, brushing a few strands of white hair from his green-rich gaze. There is no circle to be broken, not here, not like this. Everything she has been through with Nys and her Tides and the cave on the Coast no longer matters, not in the least, altogether unimportant save that it was the impetus for this moment to come to pass; every hour of suffering for her and Fenris both is only memory, only past, only gone. No circles, no hooks, no tears—only two little points of light, a straight unbroken line between them, beginning and ending in one whole.

And she is whole, even handless. Even scarred. Bethany is gone, and her mother is gone, and Nys's son is gone—but though the world is lesser for their loss the scars will heal with time, growing smaller and less tender, until she can touch them and find no pain, only memories. More will die, she understands, men and women she knows and will know and those that will be strangers to her, separated only by a sword and a choice—but she will grieve them when they part and not before, and she will not throw herself to the futile regret of those choices she can neither make nor change.

Someday, she will go back to the cave. There are bones there to be laid to rest; there is peace she must find for all that died in its dimming shadow. Someday.

But like this, here with Fenris, she has no missing pieces left to be filled. Her heart has fixed to his without regret, without repeal: a guiding lodestar in the darkest places, alight even when she cannot see her way.

She lets go.

"All right," Hawke murmurs, and Fenris pulls the book closer to them both so that she can see it more easily. He touches the arrow-scar once more, without speaking; then he finds her forearm where it rests on her hip and curls his fingers around it, his thumb stroking along the inside of her elbow, gently. The rain outside still falls unceasing, unconcerned, running in shining rivulets down the paned glass of her window; soft grey-touched light still fills the room, calming and quiet and without shadows. Somewhere a guard calls change of watch; somewhere Sebastian nods at Elthina and Anders bends over a sighing patient. Somewhere Varric and Isabela write together; somewhere Merrill laughs at a child splashing in the streets; somewhere Aveline looks up at her husband and smiles.

The world continues. They will move forward with it.

"Once upon a time," Hawke says, Fenris beside her, keeping vigil for her heart, and begins to read.

—

end.