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Whetstone Chapter 49: Help Wanted

Female Hawke/Fenris, Female Lavellan/Abelas, Female Lavellan/Merrill/Isabella, misc other pairings. Modern Culinary/Pastry School AU. DA2 & DAI Mashup.

Content Warning: Contains references to sexual abuse. can provide a ‘clean’ version if asked.

READ FROM CHAPTER 1

MASTERPOST

READ ON AO3

Fenris is standing in Danarius’ library, just over his shoulder.

It’s a jarring feeling—he remembers so precisely the musk of the old books, the hum of the laptop on the desk. He remembers the feel of the wood floor under his feet, and he’s standing on that one slat that tends to splinter. Danarius, who always wore shoes in his own home, never noticed it, but he noticed the blood that his slaves left on the carpet if they forgot to avoid it.

Danarius, for his part, is standing by the window, a glass of wine perched in his fingertips. Aggregio—Fenris knows the smell and the colour of that, knows the way the light catches it and turns it ruby, glittering. Clear-bodied, orange notes in the nose, oak and cinnamon on the tongue. Few if any legs form when swirled—a dry, dry wine.

The slave who has poured Danarius and the man before him a glass each bows and retreats, brushing past Fenris without so much as a glance to hover at a relatively safe distance. Fenris has never seen this man before—human, soporati by dress and the gun holstered on his belt. He wears the badge of the captain of Danarius’ guard, wears the magister’s colours in muted shades, in spite of his strangeness to Fenris.

“The elf boy has lasted longer than I thought,” Danarius is saying, frowning out the window.

“Ah,” the captain says, shifting his weight. “He—he’s surprised us all, really.”

Fenris finds himself studying Danarius’ face closely, the quirked brow and the slight turn of his head at the words. “How so?”

Impossible to discern for most, but even after years away from Danarius, Fenris still knows how to read even the most subtle of his ticks. The magister is annoyed for even having to ask the question—for having to press on this novelty in the first place.

“He shows aptitude,” the captain continues. “Great skill at reading an opponent. At first he simply outmaneuvered them, but since—since his increased training and food allowance, he’s been able to overpower nearly all of my men.”

Danarius looks out to the yard again. Fenris knows this isn’t truly a dream, but he finds himself bold enough to step forward, to approach the window at a better angle so he can see what Danarius is looking at.

Outside is the practice yard Fenris is still familiar with—he sees the same dummies set up, the same simple wooden benches along the perimeter. The wall, stone and tall enough to bar passage, where Danarius’ men patrol with assault rifles.

In the center of the yard itself, a pit of searing hot sand, Fenris sees himself unmarked.

Leto—Fenris cannot see himself as that person, even now—is in unarmed combat with a Vashoth slave twice his size. There is nothing elegant about the fight—Fenris instantly finds numerous flaws in Leto’s form, notes the exhaustion in his limbs, the way his hands tremble even has he keeps them up to protect his face. Leto ducks and weaves, silver hair plastered to his head with sweat and sunlight, and he uses his nimble form to its full advantage. He keeps the big Vashoth man moving, turning, keeps slipping out of range of his arms, ducking under or weaving around blows.

When Leto makes his move, he is quick and efficient. He allows the Vashoth to charge, and then he uses his smaller frame, the Vashoth’s high center of gravity against him. Fenris sees the arm across the torso a second before Leto ducks low and flips his opponent onto his back, using his own momentum against him.

The Vashoth hits the dirt. Some of the spectators cheer. Leto stands, a little uneasily, and offers a hand and an easy smile to his fallen opponent.

“How is he ranking?” Danarius asks, and Fenris tears his gaze away from the person he used to be.

“He is the top candidate, my lord,” the captain says. There is a reluctance there that is poorly hidden—Fenris knows Danarius hears it, because there’s a downward twitch to the left corner of his lips.

“Fascinating,” Danarius says instead.

Fenris blinks, and a fog comes over him. He thinks he hears someone speaking—a woman, her voice low and laced with a barely contained rage. He can almost understand what she’s saying, maybe if he just listens a little harder—

But then he is standing just over Danarius’ shoulder again, except they are in a sterile room with impossibly bright lights, white walls. There is a slave being thrown onto a pile of bodies, throat slit, and Fenris sees Leto strapped to a table while Danarius uses a small, thin blade and a tool a little like a pen full of liquid lyrium to mark the boy’s flesh.

Leto is paralyzed—by magic, for Fenris can see his eyes rolling wildly in his head.

“Keep him awake,” Danarius snarls at his assistant. “He will die otherwise, and this will all have been an utter waste.”

Danarius is filling in long, curving gashes cut into Leto’s neck, and the boy cannot even close his eyes to hide from the pain. His face is a mess, blood leaking out from three dots marked into the center of his forehead, into his eyes, his nose, and it keeps pouring out, no matter how much the assistant wipes it away.

Next, Fenris watches himself be brought before Danarius—and he can see the fear in his own eyes, the unsteadiness of a body with something wrong forced into it, made to coexist with living flesh. He watches himself bow, uneasily, wincing at the pain as the lyrium on his knees hits the floor through his clothing. Everywhere there are markings exposed to the air, they are raw at the places where his skin meets them. Some are infected, pussing, the body attempting to reject this strange substance.

Danarius sees the pus immediately, at Fenris’ knuckles and up his arms. He flies into a rage.

“Do not let him ruin them now!” he snarls, and Fenris watches himself flinch, cower instinctively. The lyrium reacts to Fenris' fear, sporadic flickering all up and down his body, and then the younger Fenris is doubled over in pain, screaming.

“Chain him to his bed if you have to,” Danarius orders. “He is worth more than this entire miserable household. Keep him from spoiling my work.”

The next time Fenris stands before Danarius, he has healed. The lyrium and his skin have reached an uneasy truce—still red and tender, but they are unhappy bedfellows now, begrudging but not warring with one another.

When Fenris drops to one knee, he does so without even a flinch of pain.

Danarius runs his hand through Fenris’ short, soft hair.

“My little wolf,” he says, with something that could never be mistaken for anything but possessiveness.

“Master,” Fenris watches himself answer.

“Strip him,” Danarius says to the other slaves. “I would like to see the fruits of my labour.”

It goes on. Fenris watches himself pull hearts from men’s chests and present them to Danarius while his master leers in approval. He watches himself being punished for his mistakes—all Danarius has to do is lift a finger, and the lyrium reacts to his magic. Fenris of old bears the unspeakable pain as well as he remembers—he does not scream, not once.

Then they are standing in Danarius’ bedroom, and Fenris is waiting for the magister to dismiss him for the day.

“Little wolf,” Danarius says, as he does only when they are alone. “Undress me.”

Fenris watches his own face, looking for a reaction. There is none—this command is not unusual, not unheard of.

But Fenris only manages to take off the jacket, and as he loosens the tie Danarius’ hands come up to catch his.

There—there Fenris sees his own mask crack. A slight intake of breath, his pupils shooting wide, reflecting the low light in the room.

“How you dote on me, my little wolf,” Danarius says. His voice is low, and laced with something that the Fenris across the room has heard before, and has scared him every time.

Danarius brings his hand up to Fenris’ face. But he doesn’t cup it gently—he grasps it, pressing his thumb down hard on the curl of lyrium just below the slave’s lips.

“How you love me,” Danarius says, and that dark thing in his voice has reached his eyes.

“Yes, master,” Fenris the slave whispers, his eyes wide with terror.

Fenris snarls, wordless and raw deep in his throat, even as his stomach turns and he fights off the urge to vomit. He turns away, closing his eyes and covering his ears. He doesn’t need to see this, doesn’t want—

There are more scenes, played somewhere behind him. Fenris does not watch them, presses his hands to his ears and focuses on the ricochet of his heart beating against his ribs, his pulse rattling around in his skull, so he cannot hear.

And then there is the heat, the suffocating heat, the smell of the ocean and the smell of blood and fire.

Fenris is standing on a ship, just over Danarius’ shoulder. The magister’s body is all stiff lines, fists clenched in fury, and as Fenris looks on, he can see himself standing on the docks, swallowed up by the crowd of people who failed to reach the ship in time.

Danarius speaks no words, and Fenris does not need to read the magister’s emotions from his face.

Fenris tries to steel himself for what is coming next, but watching is somehow worse than experiencing it all over again.

He watches the Fog Warriors kill Danarius’ hired men, watches himself stand there, still as a stone, his eyes wide as the carnage unfolds around him. Danarius brought few with him—Fenris finds that his memory is imperfect in this. He remembers far more enemies, a far greater struggle. But the Fog Warriors only have to deal with a handful of men, who are unused to fighting in thick waves of alchemical smoke.

It still takes time—not much, but the boats they have brought to shore full of their morning’s catch have been left long enough that their contents have begun to spoil. Fenris can smell it in the air, subtle as it is, and it makes his stomach turn.

Danarius himself is wounded, and they turn to Fenris, all victory cries and raised fists. This great magister, presented to Fenris like a captured prize.

Fenris looks at the illusion of himself, then, and he says, “No.”

But Danarius’ little wolf can only stare at his master’s face with an expression of immense sorrow.

Danarius mistakes it for loyalty, and grins. “Kill them all, my pet,” he says.

“No!” Fenris yells, but no one hears him. To his own ears his voice is warped, as if there is a pane of glass separating him from the scene unfolding before him.

The first one doesn’t even fight back. The second recoils, shocked, but his old self is too fast for them.

Fenris reels, bile rising in his throat. This, he cannot look away from—he sees all over again the betrayal clear on the Fog Warriors’ faces, their rage, their terror as he tears them down, one by one.

“I never agreed to your trial!” he snarls to the being he knows is causing this. “I swore you no oath!”

There is an impression of someone speaking—that voice again. He hears her words like a second heartbeat, somewhere below the surface of his skin. I must bear witness before Vengeance is granted.

Danarius watches the whole thing with a smirk on his face. He stands once Fenris has freed him from the Fog Warriors who held him, and he does not lift a finger to aid or halt Fenris’ relentless pursuit of his victims.

This wholesale slaughter, now this takes time. The sun has climbed, peaked and begun to drift back down again by the time Fenris kills the last of the Fog Warriors. The heat of the day is so severe that all of the fish is spoiled now—putrid and foul, it mingles with the blood, the acid remnants of the alchemical fog on the ground, the sting of salt water on the back of his throat.

When the last Fog Warrior falls, Fenris looks at his younger self and is surprised to see tears streaming down his face.

Fenris doesn’t remember crying—doesn’t remember anything but emptiness, resignation, a mind-numbing shock that would not relent for months, perhaps years. But there he stands, his face raw with sunlight, ocean spray and glistening with tears, his back turned to the man who has ordered this thing of him, who has shown up again and utterly destroyed all pretense at a normal life.

“Now Fenris,” Danarius says—which is strange, because Fenris doesn’t remember that either, only the pounding of blood in his ears, the calls of birds circling high above. “My little wolf. Let’s go home.”

The Fenris who is covered in the blood of those who tried to be his friends does not move, does not even flinch. Not even when Danarius calls for him again, frowning.

The third time is what startles Fenris out of whatever shock he’s fallen into—that third call of his name is what makes Fenris turn and run.

It is not a graceful escape. He trips over those he’s just killed, and real panic dominates his features with every faltered step. He scrambles over corpses and around fallen weapons, and Danarius screams his name long after Fenris has fled into the trees and out of sight.

Fenris does remember vomiting in the treeline. He still has the frame of mind to be glad Danarius doesn’t seem to have witnessed it.

“Haven’t you seen enough?” he snarls, his own voice exhausted and raw, and then the scene fades to black. Only Danarius remains, looking around in confusion.

“This is not what I was promised,” the magister shouts, and he takes a few staggering steps around, shielding his eyes as if from some light Fenris cannot see. “I was promised immortality! Power!”

The voice answers him. You swore an oath to Mythal, and you have broken it in every conceivable way.

“What?” Danarius squints around his arm. “Girl, what is she saying? Translate!”

I have witnessed your testimony and I have heard the cries of your victims for Vengeance.

“What must I do now? Tell me!”

Vengeance, the voice says, and the word rings so low and so powerful Fenris can feel his bones vibrate, will be granted.

Danarius doubles over and screams.

The scream rapidly becomes inhuman—Fenris can see the magister clutching at his fine clothing, dirtied from the trek here, as his body twists and writhes underneath it. Fenris watches as Danarius’ bones warp, stretching his skin and curving his limbs into impossible angles before they shatter, mend themselves, then shatter again. Blood winds its way over Danarius’ skin, seeping through his clothing, and Fenris recognises them as an imitation of the lyrium carved into his own flesh—but they glow with a red, red light that reeks of illness and corruption.

Fenris smells burning flesh. He watches Danarius’ torment until the magister is little more than a broken shrivel of flesh on the ground, until the screaming dies to a whimper, then a single, rasping breath that is followed only by silence.

He has to remind himself to breathe, there is such a weight on his chest. “Aevalle?” he calls. “Evanura?”

Which is it?

Fenris balks at the question. “Does it matter?”

Yes.

“Show me where she is.”

You would witness her Vengeance as well?

Fenris curses. “I never asked for that.”

But the darkness around him springs to light anyway—and he’s in a room, bright and shining, watching Leto being carried away over the back of a guard.

He is standing just beside Evanura, lying on the table—she is chained there, her hand with the Anchor cut open and flayed apart down to the bones and ligaments there, where something strange and green and pulsing lies. Fenris’ stomach turns at the sight, at the smell of the magic keeping it from beginning to rot. Blood magic—fuelled by her own, he thinks, for there are no dead slaves littering the floor like waste.

“Tell me,” Danarius says, leaning in closer. Fenris knows there is a camera in this room that will record her every word.

“You’ll hold her accountable for secrets she gave away under torture?” Fenris says, not listening to Evanura explaining what she knows of the ritual. His voice comes out in the strange muffled quality as before, and he knows she cannot hear him.

She swore an oath, the voice answers simply.

“Vishante kaffas,” Fenris says, softly. He is looking at the guilt written all over Evanura’s face.

Then Fenris leans against a wall in the old ruin Hawke and Merrill brought him to. Evanura is crouched in the shadows, a hand to her mouth as she watches the Dread Wolf kill Mythal and steal her soul.

“And this was not her doing,” Fenris says, simply.

Her oath was to stand as Mythal’s sentinel, to protect her and what she left behind for the ages to come. She failed in her duty.

He takes one look down at Evanura, weak and barely awake, and he knows that she could not have stopped Solas if she tried.

The rest, Fenris knows. His life is once again the subject of this scrap of Mythal’s scrutiny, and he mostly finds himself watching from afar, listening with boiling blood to Evanura’s evasiveness, to her half-truths.

She lied to you, the voice says.

“Unless she swore an oath to Mythal to never tell one specific elf any lies, then I don’t see why we have a problem.”

She evaded Vengeance. She knew her fate and would not come meet it.

“Possibly because this is mind-numbing and tedious,” Fenris grumbles.

He watches through his car window as they lie with their backs to each other. Fenris watches the lightning in the sky, and Evanura stares at her hand.

“Nineteen,” he tells her. “I think.”

“Ir abelas, Fenris.”

“You’re not Danarius,” is his answer, and Fenris understands the irony now. From where he stands, he can see the pain and regret crossing Evanura’s features.

He watches a hundred such near-confessions. He bears witness to every false start, every hesitation in her manner. Every time she looks at him and opens her mouth, only to shake her head and look away, grief all over her features. She hums the song she learned from Varania in his childhood, and sometimes she drinks herself into a stupor.

He witnesses those, too. Dragging her away from Sera’s apartment building, taking her phone away from her. Taking her to an abandoned lot with all the empty wine bottles they stole after work, and they throw them against half-built walls, rusted support beams.

Fenris joins her in getting drunk only once—after that, it is clear to him she cannot be left unsupervised in her state. After the fourth time he holds her hair as she vomits into a garbage can, he forbids the practice altogether.

He sees himself sitting on his mattress. “Tell me to leave,” he pleads, begs.

“No,” she answers. Not forbidding him to go—just refusing to make it anything but his choice.

Then he is watching himself bleed out on the floor, and Evanura giving herself up to Danarius for him.

She chained you to her, the voice says, as surely as Danarius.

Fenris finds himself frowning. When Pride said the same thing, Fenris had agreed. But he thinks of the spirit of Love, and the moment that he witnessed during the fight with Nightmare.

“No,” he tells the voice, but he doesn’t quite know how to explain it.

Truly?

The world whirls around him, and Fenris sees himself standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. He flinches at the sight of himself—rail thin and sunken eyes, something desperate written on every inch of his body. Not even bothering to hide the lyrium anymore—let Danarius find him. It’s the height of summer, and too hot for a sweater.

He’s staring at a sign in the window.

“It says Help Wanted.”

Both Fenrises turn towards the source of the voice—the one in memory slowly, sluggish with hunger and exhaustion, and the one in person with wide-eyed alertness, knowing before he sees who the voice belongs to.

Cole stands there, his hands shoved into the pockets of his washed out hoodie, his too-pale eyes searching Fenris’ for something.

Memory Fenris recovers. “I know,” he lies, his voice thick, some remembered fight response beginning to kick in.

Real Fenris gapes openly. “I don’t remember this,” he says.

“You do now.” Cole hums, thoughtfully, before tilting his head and rocking forward on the balls of his feet. “Asa’ma’lin is in there.”

“Who?”

“She needs help, but—she doesn’t want to see me ever again. Told me so, in the place the truth came tumbling out. Not the right truth, but some of it.”

The Fenris of memory looks at the sign. “I don’t think that’s the kind of help they mean,” he says, brows furrowing.

“It’s the kind she needs,” Cole says, urgently, “the kind you need. You could make each other better, take all the battered parts and make them—less. Not whole, but stronger than before.”

Fenris watches himself nod, slowly, then turn away to glance down the street at some noise—a cat chasing a rat into an alley. When he turns again, Cole is gone. Fenris watches as the confusion slowly leaves his own eyes, as he forgets everything but the sign reading Help Wanted, and opens the door to the Dalish restaurant.

“That doesn’t count,” Fenris says with a rough voice. “Cole never—she never asked him to do that.”

But he did it for her, the voice says, like the Dread Wolf killed Mythal for her.

“One is a spirit of Compassion,” Fenris says, “and the other is her father.”

She hurt you. Lied to you. Kept your secret for a chance at redemption.

“I don’t care!” Fenris snarls, feeling the lyrium in his skin ignite in his rage.

The light spreading from him casts the vision around him into smoke, and the Dalish restaurant disappears—as if whatever is controlling it is recoiling from him. He can make out a room of some kind, sunlight dancing through a hole in the ceiling. Soft moss under his feet, a statue ahead of him. Lying at its base—

“Aevalle!”

The memories try to close in around him again, but Fenris leaps forward with a burst of his lyrium. He keeps it burning as he kneels beside her, feeling the rage of whatever presence is in this place howling at being denied its victim. He gathers her up in his arms and shakes her, but her eyes do not open.

She’s so still. He’s shaking so badly he can’t even tell if she’s breathing.

“Aevalle,” he tries again, his voice rising. “Evanura, please. Wake up.”

He hears the presence screaming, thrashing against the shield his circle of light is providing them. Guard dog, it calls him, slave, you would choose to bend the knee before you would stand for yourself?

He closes his eyes and holds Evanura close, buries his face in her hair to shut the remnant out. He can’t keep this up forever, and he wishes he had anyone with him—Hawke and her clever tongue, Merrill to say the most impossibly kind thing and make this creature change its mind, even Solas or Abelas to know the proper way to appeal, the spirit of Love to show Mythal’s remnant what it showed Fenris, or Cole to read the right way to help without a word being spoken.

It keeps nothing kind. You can—you must.

Some advice, Fenris thinks with a scoff. Fenris has been everything but kind—maybe Leto was, once, but Fenris is all rough edges and an unending rage.

But he is exhausted, and even the lyrium is beginning to fail him. He can feel the numbness in his fingers that means he’s almost run out—after demons and Nightmare and the dash through the temple, he can feel a weariness in his limbs that goes with running, endless running, without stopping to see where his feet have been taking him.

Time is running out, and Fenris is the only one here.

“You asked me once,” he says, low and rough, “when can we stop running?”

He chokes on the question. He can feel the remnant pressing closer, and his skin itches at the feeling of the lyrium running out of power. He clutches Evanura tighter still, and does not look up.

“You always fight when I fight. You always run when I run. I should have known you would stop when I did. I should have—seen this, somehow. Listened to you, all the times you tried to tell me.”

His bones are humming, the remnant’s mindless shrieking growing stronger as his lyrium begins to fail.

“I am so sorry, my friend,” he tells her, his face buried in her hair, tears streaming down his face. “And I forgive you.”

The lyrium in his skin flickers out, and the buzzing in his ears that signifies Fenris’ weakness begins. He closes his eyes and braces for—whatever is coming, hoping to at least shield her a little, protect his friend one last time.

But nothing comes. Only the sound of the wind in trees he cannot hear.

Fenris looks up, frowning—he sees only a room, as overgrown as any of those he has passed through to get here. He’s kneeling in a sunbeam, in light filtered gold and green through the leaves far above, and a number of birds flit through the opening, as pleased as can be.

In his arms, Evanura Lavellan gasps for air, as if emerging from water.

He’s still clutching her tight, and she fights his grip for half a heartbeat before she realises who he is.

“Lethallin?” she asks, her voice weak.

She sits up as Fenris steadies her. Her green eyes are—wide, wild, darting around her. She spots Danarius’ corpse, and stares at it disbelieving for a moment.

“Evanura,” he says. “Are you alright?”

She looks back at Fenris, reaches up to touch his cheek and the wetness there.

“You know,” she whispers. “You’re here, and you know.”

He is surprised to find himself smiling—crooked, a little bashful for his tears, but smiling nonetheless.

Something breaks in her expression, then, and she begins to cry in earnest. She throws her arms around his neck, buries her face in his shoulder and such an uncharacteristically loud sob breaks from her that Fenris is too startled to respond, at first. But he wraps his arms around her and holds her there regardless, still smiling, a relief he can’t describe filling him up.

“Ir abelas, lethallin, I’m so sorry,” she sobs, over and over, and he forgives her each and every time.

It isn’t long before the doors behind them open with a grind of stone upon ancient stone. Fenris half-turns, Evanura peeks up from his shoulder, and they find the others—all of them, those they left behind to fight Danarius’ mercenaries and the Venatori looking battered and bleeding from several new places but whole, hale, alive.

Abelas stands at the front, his expression unreadable.

“Nadas’lin,” Evanura says through her sobs.

Fenris blinks, there is a Fade Step somewhere, he thinks—too exhausted to track it—and then Evanura is lifted directly out of his arms and into the ancient sentinel’s. He holds her impossibly tight, and he is sobbing too, tears streaming down his face as he kisses her—greedily, hungrily, and she kisses him back as if she never needs to breathe again.

It doesn’t stop until Cole says, “Asa’ma’lin, Merrill needs you too.”

Abelas sets Evanura down, and then Merrill is on her in a blur of tangled limbs and broken elven. Evanura almost topples, but Abelas steadies her, and Fenris thinks there is too much crying going on, so he rubs his own eyes with the back of his arm to hide the evidence.

One by one, their strange group of assorted friends filters in, and as Cole dries Evanura’s eyes with the sleeve of his sweater Abelas offers Fenris a hand up.

Fenris stares at it.

“I suppose,” the ancient elf says, flatly, “you are capable of following some instruction.”

Fenris doesn’t have it in him to get riled up by the comment. He takes the offered hand and stands—teetering, exhausted.

Hawke catches his arm and slings it over her shoulders.

“Bullshit,” Hawke says. “I think I told you not to walk through the judgement door.”

Fenris scratches the back of his neck, where the spent lyrium itches the worst. It will hurt later, so he will take the dull itch while he can. “I believe you did.”

“So there we go. You’re terrible at following instructions.” She tilts her head to the side, smiling. “But it all worked out in the end, so I suppose I can forgive you.”

He smiles back at her. “Then I suppose I might forgive you for vanishing again.”

She balks in mock-offense. “Again, he says! Like I’ve suddenly made a habit of falling into pits!”

Fenris laughs, louder than he means to. He turns his head to the doorway, and his smile fades when he sees Solas, lingering in the shadow cast by what’s left of the ceiling. On the cusp of entering or leaving, he doesn’t seem sure.

Then the sentinels begin to pour in—some of them reluctantly, others with nearly as much open glee as Merrill. The woman who had spoken to let them through is the first, and she wraps Evanura in a protective bear hug seconds before they are both immediately smothered. They knock foreheads and elbows, and Fenris recognises Evanura’s cursing through it all, and they all try to speak at once in Elven.

Through the crowd, Fenris loses sight of Solas. When the door is cleared, the old elf has vanished without a trace.

“Hawke,” he says, surprising himself with the urgency of it.

“On it,” she replies, and Fenris feels the Fade Step form around them.

They catch up to Solas somewhere in the rooms with the tiles—he is standing there, as if waiting for them, his gaze turned up to the sky. The sunlight is beginning to turn orange, marking the very beginnings of the setting sun.

“Running away again?” Fenris accuses, and Solas starts—he must have been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard them coming.

“I will trouble Evanura no further,” he says, folding his arms behind his back as he faces them. “She is safe, and I cannot express the gratitude I feel for that. I owe you...” He closes his eyes. “Everything.”

“But you’re still leaving,” Hawke says.

“I must now search for her mother, before she is lost forever.”

“Yeah.” Hawke blows a curl of her hair out of her eyes. “Look, Solas—I mean this in the best way possible. Get your ass back there and talk to your fucking kid.”

Fenris, still leaning on Hawke for support, turns to look at her, incredulous.

Solas’ expression is just as shocked.

“I spent three goddamn months hallucinating about you two not talking to each other,” she continues. “I am not going to stand here and let you fuck this up all over again.”

Solas opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it and closes it again. Fenris is surprised to see him smile, of all things.

“I should have expected such a treatment,” he says, “considering a spirit of Love was so determined to stick with you.”

Hawke makes a small hmph noise, but does not respond.

Solas ducks his head—something like assent, something like respect, and he starts to walk the way they came, back into the heart of the temple.

“Seriously though,” Hawke says, when Solas is out of sight, “fuck that guy.”

Fenris laughs again—even louder, even though the lyrium begins to pain and it ends in a curse, ends with him doubling over, and Hawke lowering him to a collapsed stone wall.

He waves off her concern. “This is—normal,” he manages, gritting his teeth. “It will pass.”

She sits next to him, and she does not let go of his hand.

They say nothing for a time, watching brilliant reds begin to stretch across the sky to the west.

“You alright?” Hawke asks, gently, leaning her head on his shoulder.

He hisses in pain when her makes contact with the sensitive lyrium under his shirt.

“Sorry!” she exclaims jerking away. “Sorry! Oh shit, I’m the literal worst, I forgot...”

But he’s laughing again—that’s the third time, some part of him thinks. This one is low and soft, and not without pain as the lyrium begins pulling energy from the air around him.

“I’m—I’m fine,” he tells her. And then, because it’s the truth, he adds, “I’m—better than I have been in a long time.”

He admires her smile instead of the sky. Danarius’ end is still raw in his mind, and all the things he witnessed again before it. But with Hawke smiling at him, holding his hand, he feels even the pain of the lyrium a little less, and his past finally feels as if it is long behind him.

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