At Your Side (A Dragon Age fanfiction)

Broken Open

Fenris made his way back toward Kirkwall, haunted by the image of Hawke's crumpled face. How could he have forgotten she was the daughter of a mage and said such a thing to her?

How could he have let himself get so close to someone so personally touched by magic in the first place? Everything Hawke was, everything she did, it all came from magic. Could he overlook that, overlook her championing of mages? Her mage companions: a blood mage and an abomination, and she fought for them, protected them. She asked Fenris to fight for and protect those mages.

His hand was still red with Hadriana's blood. Fenris clenched his fist, feeling her heart slick against his fingers all over again. He had broken his word, the only thing he truly owned—but he had needed to know what Hadriana held over him. It sickened him to think that he had been her toy once again, that she had held the information over his head and he had leaped at it like an animal. Like a pet. The thought made his stomach turn, but there was nothing left in it to retch.

Through all the confusion of his thoughts and feelings, the idea of a sister tickled against the edges of Fenris's mind. For all that he tried not to think of her, the name Varania was like a pulsebeat underlining everything else he thought. Why had he asked? Why had he wanted to know? Varania's brother, whoever he had been, was gone. He had given up on being anything other than Fenris, escaped slave and trained killer, long ago. What would be the point of stirring things up now?

He was close to the city now, and Fenris noticed that his steps were slowing. The thought of going into the city was too much—the noise, the people, the sights and smells. Nausea shook him again, and he turned away, toward the Wounded Coast where the clean salty air and the solitude beckoned. Leaving the path, he scaled the rocks to reach the edge of the water, wanting to get as far away as he could before Hawke and the others caught up.

Fenris stood on the beach and hurled rocks into the water with furious energy until both arms were sore, the activity giving his mind a way to escape from the clamor, from the women's names that kept repeating: Hadriana; Hawke; Varania.

Groaning, he cradled his head in his hands. He wanted, more than anything, just to have it all stop for once. No thought, no memories, no taunting blackness where memories should be. No hate, no confusing jumble of fear and desire, no longing for things lost. Just ... nothing.

He sank down on a rock, staring down into a tide-pool at his feet, watching a hermit crab scuttle along in the shallow water. A shadow crossed the water, a seagull flying overhead, and the crab stopped, ducking into its shell until nothing could be seen of the occupant, the shell looking like any other abandoned seashell. As Fenris watched, the crab slowly emerged, moving across the pool again. It was a simple life, he thought. Forage for food; don't get eaten. His life had been that way once—keep running; scrounge food where you can; don't get caught. Until he had come to Kirkwall, and things had rapidly grown complicated. Perhaps he would have been better off had he never stopped.

"I thought I'd find you around here."

The voice snapped him out of his reverie, and he turned around to look at the voice's owner. Isabela stood posed on the rocks, her hair and the skirt of her tunic flapping in the breeze.

Fenris shook his head, looking back at the tide pool. The waves were coming up over the rocks and into the pool now, and the hermit crab was lost in a swirl of sand at the bottom.

"Don't you want to know why I thought you'd be here?"

"No."

"Then I suppose you won't want to know why I came."