Chapter Text
And they said, I do not want this, but the seal lay torn and broken.
And they said, I am not ready, but the white horse stood awaiting.
And they said, I am no soldier, but the orders were still given.
And they said, I will not forgive you, and they never did forget.
There’s trouble in your jacket, leather loose over his shoulders, framing tattered clothes patched up with torn banners and old shirts you got too broad to wear. His fingers skim guitar strings too light to draw a song out, gaze pointed to the ground but focused years and miles away.
Crackling flames and cicadas in the grass are the sounds of your silent night, so common a chorus that they fade into the back of your awareness. You lose track of them, yet each time his chest swells and slips you trick yourself into thinking you can hear his breath. It’s a whisper on the wind that blows his pale hair around his face, carried louder in your imagination that any other music of the night.
Fenris presses his palm to the strings to still notes that never reached you.
“They’ll be back?” He casts a gaze past you to the fire, and you reply with a nod, shifting your unlit cigarette with the tip of your tongue behind your teeth. “Why did they leave?”
“Don’t know about you, but I prefer a full belly to an empty one.” You flash a lazy smile his way and he parries it with a roll of his eyes. Not so easily swayed, this Fenris. “Must’ve fed yourself, before we picked you up.”
“I didn’t exactly have money to spare.” His fingers slip to rest again the wooden curve of the instrument in his arms, and you aren’t sure if he understands how much trust Varric is showing him, leaving it with him so freely. “You’re definitely the leader, sitting here while they fetch your meals.”
“Someone has to watch the bikes, serah,” you start, and the way his eyes snap to you silences you before you suggest he might also need to be kept under observation. After a tense pause the cicadas fill with reproachful notes, you clear your throat and glance away. “We take shifts. I will go next time, and someone different will stay.”
“You could have left me… Unless you listen to the asshole who talks like I’m an animal, and think I’m waiting to make off with your things in the dead of the night?”
“Anders is not- He’s just-” Anders, you finish below your breath, but shake it off with a turn of your head. “He is wrong about you.”
This time, his searching fingers draw a chord, resonating pure into the air.
“You don’t know that.” It’s not the sentiment you expected, and you blink the surprise away, turning your face entirely towards him. “I could be a murderer, waiting for my moment; a criminal, looking for the slaves I claim to be. You know nothing about me, Hawke.”
He has you pinned beneath his startling stare, pupils ringed with a green that blazes against the dark, and as the quiet draws out you find the lies that normally fall so smooth and simple from your tongue are silenced under the weight of his presence. Even the cigarette, unlit and useless, feels too much of a falsehood. You tug it from your lips and flick it away, eyes following it into the grass so you don’t have to meet that overpowering gaze for even a moment longer.
“I trust you,” is all you can manage, soft and pointless. There’s no explanation to go with it, no reason he’ll accept; just a sentiment you’ve held since he appeared to you with a shotgun blast and a halo of blood about his head. You trust him, as you trust yourself to draw breath. It’s thoughtless, instinctual. Stupid.
But when were you ever smart?
“Would you trust any stranger?” Fenris manages to pour more disbelief into his words than you thought possible. When you don’t reply, he twists the blade; ”one who willingly led you into an ambush as bait?”
“No! No, of course not, and we said we were not going to mention that.” You give an irritated huff of air, but it falls flat, dulled by the genuine bite in his tone. “I… I don’t have an answer, Fenris. Make of that what you will.”
Cicadas stretch into an endless hum that you can no longer hear, swift broken when he plucks a note too sharp and harsh for it to fall anything but uncomfortably flat. Fenris slams a hand to the strings to stop the sound, but its echoes fade out slowly, far beyond where his fingers can halt them. Even those fading whispers are long gone before you release the breath you didn’t realise had stuck in your lungs.
♁
“Out like a light, God’s balls. So much for watching our things.” Varric’s voice tugs at you, starting off dim and distant but growing sharper as his boot nudges your side. “It’s a good thing Broody was here. Hawke didn't even- My, my, our fearless leader rises. Good morning, sunshine, did we disturb your beauty sleep?”
You blink, the sun dazzling and sparkling across the mist over your eyes. Heat swamps you, tugs you back towards sleep, but that boot is quick to remind you of your company, and you manage to focus long enough to swallow away the horrid must in your mouth.
“What time’s it?”
“It’s time to wake up, that’s what time it is.” Varric offers a hand, and you take it, squeezing hard enough your nails leave crescents in the hot leather around his palm. "We got held up, a little trouble- nothing we couldn't handle, mind you, even if the amount of bandages Blondie has us in would make you think otherwise."
"You were wounded," Anders answers simply, bustling over at the sound of his given mantle. "Hawke, awake, good, how are you feeling? The sun's been baking and anything could've been in the grass overnight-"
His palm is clammy against your forehead, but the cool of it is soothing. You flash him a small smile as Varric finishes dragging you to your feet.
"I feel fine, dear." Your reassurances do little, and you know that full well, but the petname has his hand sharply off you and his cheeks turning ruddy red. "Besides, I'm sure Fenris would have seen off anything that crept out of the darkness."
The smile that had almost warmed Anders' face drops to a hard line, his eyes casting away from you.
"Maybe," he mutters, and that one word manages to hold all the implications anyone else would need an essay to get across to you. He's dangerous, Hawke, unpredictable. You trusted him with our things but more importantly you trusted him with your life, and anything could have happened, because he isn't safe. He isn't one of us.
"Quiet," you whisper to his imagined slights, and Varric and Anders give you identical looks that still hold very different weight and intention. "I- need quiet." The save is smooth, your lies glossy again in the glamour of the sun. "A moment?"
They recede, but it's not without a hesitation, that pause in step that reminds you there's time to reconsider and take them along. You smile politely, and the moment passes, Anders joining Merrill in checking through the medical supplies while Aveline counts boxes of ammunition beside them, and Varric bumping Sebastian's leg with his hip before taking one of the bags the Scot is struggling with and hoisting it over towards Isabela.
What a wonderful little family you've made, forged of dirt and burning rubber. They say blood is thicker than water and once you would have doubted it, but with a brother who fled and a mother who fell, this blood has grown thick enough to hold you up even when your knees were weak and your head was swimming.
This is home, and though it may roam, it still feels more stable than any crumbling ruin you may pass.
You will need this, for what is coming. You know they all understand.
Before you can finish opening your mouth to question the notable absence, Varric is pointing without looking, and you sigh and follow his direction without doubt. It takes you a few minutes of avoiding holes and pushing grass aside to finally reach Fenris, finding him huddled on a rock with his back to you, his head dipped to hide in the space his chest and bent legs create.
"...We will away soon." You knock a pebble with your foot, and it bounces over, stopping beside him. Slowly, his fingers uncurl, stretching down and lifting the smooth grey stone. He presses it to his palm, turning his head to gaze down at it. "...Are you well, Fenris?"
"Why do you speak like that?"
Something in your chest seizes, subtle but hard to ignore. It’s at your core, deep and painful, but you push it away as you force your fingers to loosen, laughing with forced brightness.
"...Like what?"
The pebble rushes through the air and skims along the gravel and cracked earth, his arm lingering where he threw it before dropping heavily to hold his legs to his chest, a barrier between him and the world, between him and- and you.
"You're very good at pretending, but sometimes you slip up. You speak like you're in a novel, and you called me serah. No one says shit like that." He scowls into air, shoulders tense. "I thought I was being stupid. But-"
"But?" You push gently when he just falls quiet, and he barks out a sharp laugh.
"Nothing.” The tension in him unwinds easily, too quick and too simple. You know it’s false, but you of all people can’t call him out on that, not with the honey that you drip when you flash purposeful smiles and whisper carefully chosen, deathly sweet words. “The heat’s getting to me.”
“You should talk to Anders.”
“I’ll take my chances with the heatstroke.”
This time, you manage a laugh as warm as the sun that beats down upon you both, but though Fenris’ lips may twitch in return, you can taste his concern flavouring the moment. The humour fades swiftly, and you look back over the grass with a frown far too earnest for your liking.
You trust him. You’d do anything to make him trust you.
“Let us away, then,” he mimics, the impression too close for comfort. “It’s not like I have many other options.”
In that instant, you want to tell him everything, you do; you want to whisper the truth and hope he believes it, that it brings him closer to you, that it proves you’re capable of speaking something real-
But he turns from you, before you gather the courage, and strides into the grass without another look your way.
♁
You return later than you should, spending too long lost in the thoughts that still swarm you like a whining cloud after your blood. Varric no doubt already warned them how long you’d be gone, but sure enough, that does nothing to still Aveline’s impatient foot as you appear, drumming a beat of displeasure into the dirt.
The others, the rest, cluster around your dead fire, playing cards and songs that mingle into a mess that feels too domestic for you to threaten with you presence. You walk to the watching guard instead, her leather belted around her like armour and her gun proud across her back, reflecting red from the sun for an instant before she shifts and all is plain silver and polished wood, no hint of a bloody threat to be seen.
“We could have been halfway there by now,” she murmurs, and you flinch away from the truth of it. “First we pick up a stray off a street corner- one we have no reason to trust, Hawke, swallow that pill and admit Anders is right- and now you’re so occupied with him it’s like you’ve forgotten what we’re here for.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” How could you? The weight of it still aches behind your eyes, lifting only when you follow the call and look to the west. “Varric told you all, we need him.”
“Aye, he said we need him, but not in ways that make us forget our duty and become blushing children in his presence.”
“You’re one to talk! I remember Donnic-” It’s out before you can stop it, and Aveline’s eyes are bright with fire when they snap to you, her pretty mouth curling in a vicious snarl.
“Donnic was long ago, and in an age we were not needed, just the same as my Wesley before him.” She leans close, and her breath is cinders and ashes, burning against your cheek as you defiantly stand your ground. “Don’t you dare use their names against me, Champion.” The name is spit like a curse and God knows it may as well be, “I let them go when it was time.”
“Of course you did, Officer. You always followed orders like a good soldier.”
“Yes, Hawke, I do. Because we are soldiers.”
Something heats across your face and in the tips of your finger, a song for blood crying out in your veins, but before you can act on it your hand is seized, and held firm, the rage plummeting out of you with ever stroke of Merrill’s thumbs across your skin.
“Now then,” she murmurs, just as quiet as the steps she crept up on you both with. “There’ll be none of that, will there?”
Her gaze flits between the pair of you, and Aveline softens as your shoulders unwind, though your eyes stay firmly averted. Merrill’s smile might be gentle, but it’s hiding teeth that could tear as well as any others; she kisses the back of your hand, then takes Aveline’s, repeating the motion just as calm and quiet.
“You two used to be such good friends. I know things have been hard, but it’s nearly over now, and soon we can rest again and laugh at all of this.” It’s easy to believe it, spoken so lightly in her voice that chimes and flows like a melody. “Fenris is welcome, and fighting gets us nowhere. Even you know fighting should be done for good reasons, Aveline.”
“I do,” Aveline concedes, cheeks pink under her freckles. “I’m… sorry. I haven’t been myself, lately.”
“None of us have,” you agree, letting some of your weariness slip into the words. “I’ve hardly cracked a joke since we set off.”
“Truly a sign of dark times.”
“It’s a heavy burden, and it’s made no kinder when we’re half ourselves.” Merrill’s voice is a drop of honey down an aching throat, a cold cloth to your head that fights away the merciless sun. It’s so simple to sink into it, and let your troubles be distant for a moment; to follow her with your eyes as she leaves a palm-print in the dust on Aveline’s fiery tank, and treads lightly to wipe the dirt from her own, pale leather seat. “We’re half ourselves and a long way from home, but we’ll be back, soon. What must come will be done, and we’ll remember what we were.”
“He’s not going to like it, is he?” You look to Fenris, who has cocked a wry smile at Varric as Sebastian throws his poor hand down in disgust. He looks so relaxed, now, a world away from the huddled shape that awaited you earlier, or the look on his face which still burns in your memory, vivid against a dark night sky.
Merrill sighs, and the image fades away.
“Have some faith, Hawke.” She daintily lifts herself onto her Harley, brushing the ivory dials and humming at the flurry of frost that the sun quickly does away with. “He’s still here.”
“Are we leaving?” Anders calls, when the engine roars into life, shattering the stillness and stability the fresco almost held. You nod, and find your way to pearly white, rubbing the tank with a softness once reserved for the withers of a horse. She’s taken you far, this one. The crest marked in matte amongst the gloss is old and noble, but she deserves it, more than any.
You mount up, and find Fenris lingering beside you, though his gaze is pointedly on where Anders is complaining his way into Aveline’s sidecar.
“Am I with you?” Fenris doesn’t look at you as he says it, his gaze moving even further away, and you swallow the vile taste in your mouth as you shrug and settle your elbows on the handles.
“Are you, Fenris?”
The words hang, and even the chorus of another engine, and the third, cannot silence the implications. His shoulders slump, ever so slightly, then he turns to you, raising himself up proudly as he does.
“For better or worse, I suppose I am.”
He doesn’t trust you, and that bites, but Merrill is right. He’s still here, and you have time, even if the sands run thinner that you’d like.
You kick down the foot rest and he nimbly hops up onto it, settling behind you and apprehensively placing his hands to your back. You would tell him to hold your waist, but you won’t waste your breath, so you just lift yourself and settle, coaxing the engine into life with a twist of your wrist and a hot flash beneath your fingers.
“Most people use keys,” He mutters below his breath, and you smile, glancing over your shoulder and meeting his eyes for a moment before you kick your stand in, lurching once and then pulling forward smoothly with a cloud of dust behind you. The world is roaring, resonating through your bones, and as you cut a curve through the grass you hear Varric shouting some likely witty battle cry, before they’re roaring beside you, and past you, and you laugh and chase after them with the wind in your hair and a fire brighter than the sun in your eyes.
There may be doubts, but you can never doubt this, not this moment where all is a blur and the world races past and you are alive.
Even through the leather, you feel fingers curl against your back.
The pressure in your head is fierce, so you turn your gaze towards the west, fighting Sebastian to lead the way despite Aveline’s hollered warnings to be careful. Varric sings a song that’s lost below the engines, sat against Merrill’s back as she guides the shadows that close up in your wake.
♁