To Bleed the Mage

"Please take it," she urged, pressing the amulet into his hand. "I know you'd at least appreciate the sentiment."

From the clinic entrance, Fenris scowled. Hawke was closing Anders's fingers around the trinket.

"I," Anders murmured, his eyes filling with some knowing emotion. "I don't know what to say."

"Say nothing," Hawke said. She moved closer. "Except for perhaps, 'Thank you.'"

Anders smiled. He threaded the silken cord over his head.

"Thank you," he said, and altogether the threads of lyrium in Fenris's skin burned, like fine razors, when Hawke gently tucked the amulet into Anders's shirt, and her small fingers lingered over his heart.

#

He heard her voice echoing through the mansion only after the dim, momentary suffusion of his markings had faded.

"Fenris?" And then slow footsteps, their hesitation making him scowl.

Fenris swallowed a measure of bitter, biting wine. The Agreggio had not dulled his irritation, as he had hoped it would. Its dry bouquet and sanguine hue only tempered it. He tossed the bottle to one side, and the crash of shattering glass paused her approach.

"Hello?" Hawke called out.

"'Tis only I," he shouted, nearly laughing.

She was at his door then, peering at him disapprovingly.

"You know, your neighbors are bound to call the guard sooner or later," she said.

He lifted his eyebrows in mock disbelief. "Well, then I shall meet them with open arms." He extended his arms and spread his fingers. The firelight gleamed from the long edges of his armored claws.

She shook her head but then betrayed a smile when she crossed the room. She took a seat on the gilded couch across from him.

"Save any for me at least?" she said, reaching for the bottles of vintage that lined the trestle table.

"A swallow or two," he murmured. His eyes fell upon her reaching arm. The sleeve of her robe had pulled back, exposing her wrist. Thin scars striped the white flesh, marching ladder-like to the meat of her palm, where keloids had formed over the well-used gouges. He set his jaw. The sight of that hand closing over Anders's crawled into his brain.

Hawke drank from the bottle and coughed sportingly when she swallowed. "Maker," she gasped. "I can't tell if this wine is just old or if it's turned."

"You can't conjure up a spell that would aid you?" he uttered.

She stared at him, mid-sip. "Excuse me?" she said.

He simply waved a hand at her and shook his head. The wine blurred his vision, and he blinked his eyes hard.

"Fenris," she said, lowering the bottle with a thunk. "If there's something you need to say —"

"Well, serah, I've said it," he bit out. The heat rose in him again. "You've got your dagger with you, I've no doubt. Use it. Throw about your maleficant blood sorcery and reveal the wine's secrets."

"What are you on about?" she said, and the exasperation in her voice enraged him.

He shoved himself from the couch and darted forward, thrusting his face close to hers.

"You know of my past," he said. "You know of the horrors I suffered in Tevinter. And yet you sympathize with their tyranny because you are a mage? So much that you would gift a very symbol of the Imperium like a lover's bauble? To that —" He grasped for the words. "— that wretched, propaganda-peddling, demon-harboring Anders?"