Chapter Text
There were soot and burn marks all over everything. Anders spat disgustedly as he examined the damage to his coat – its brown leather and green hemp by now so stained and discoloured from wash after wash after mess, that it might be better to soak the whole thing in pitch.
And the coat was not the only victim of this most recent fight.
Anders scowled at his staff. When he’d used it to strike one of the dracolings, the metal jaw of its spellcasting focus had been bent out of shape more than it already was – so much so this time, it could not longer reliably hold spells. Anders had needed to discard it mid-battle, and had concluded the fight with unarmed casting.
Anders crumpled over on himself where he sat, on the rocky ledge of the Bone Pit.
His life was a mess. His clothes needed mending. Coin needed to be diverted to either repair his staff, or purchase a new one. He spent free time he didn’t have mooning over Hawke – following her through the Deep Roads and fighting her dragons at her blighted mines – when she didn’t even like men to begin with. And Justice would be expecting him to do a half dozen things for their clinic and their cause just about the second he returned home.
Anders let out a low moan, lamenting all the ways everything had gone wrong in his life, at just about the same time he’d cast aside his old name to become ‘Anders’ to start with.
That was when he noticed Fenris standing over him, posture stiff, eyeing Anders with his usual sort of critical and scrutinising expression. There was no doubt he would find Anders lacking, as per usual.
Anders glared up at him.
“Fenris,” he said tersely.
“Mage,” Fenris responded.
Nothing more was forthcoming, and Anders felt his hackles raise further the longer the moment dragged out.
If the blasted elf thought he could pick a fight today and walk away unscathed, he had another blighted thing coming.
He was about to bark something at Fenris, dare him to escalate or run off, when Fenris beat him to the punch.
“You did not need to divert that last healing spell to me,” Fenris said critically. “I had already dispatched those around me, while you still had a dracoling welded to your calf.”
Anders’s frown deepened, as he remembered the fortitude and concentration it had taken to finish casting that healing spell, while trying to shake the dracoling off from where it had bitten into his leg.
And it was just like Fenris not to appreciate it in the damned slightest!
“I didn’t realise you knew how to do my job so much better than me!” Anders sing-songed mockingly. “You’d be the first person to see me hanged, if you’d keeled over from blood loss on my watch!”
“Public execution is considered impolitic amongst mages in Tevinter,” Fenris informed. “Perhaps there are more delicate and private means by which we could achieve satisfaction.”
Anders bristled at the threat but, before he could muster a proper response, Fenris had pulled a silk handkerchief – moss green in colour – from the belt at his waist. And he reached over to polish and reset the head of Anders’s malfunctioning staff.
“You should take better care of your things, mage,” Fenris grunted, as if terribly offended by the state of affairs.
“I’ll take care of that myself!” Anders snapped.
He snatched his staff away, clutching the metal head of the staff and the kerchief protectively against his chest. He finished buffing the surface of the red steel, and bent the figurehead back into place, before holding out the handkerchief for Fenris to reclaim.
But Fenris, who had watched the whole of this with a cold and blank expression, shied away from Anders’s hand.
“Keep it,” he said, before turning towards the path home.
Leaving Anders behind to ponder the man’s absolute nerve.
==
“There’s something wrong with him,” Anders said.
He was scowling darkly across the tavern at Fenris, who was on his third ale of the afternoon and losing badly to Hawke and Merrill at a game of darts.
Varric didn’t look up from his revisions. “You’ve known the elf for how many years, Blondie, and you’re just now noticing there’s something wrong with him?”
“No, of course there was always something wrong with him,” Anders hurried to clarify, “but he’s been up to something recently.”
Varric scoffed. “You mean other than binge drinking and indiscriminate killing?”
“Or getting half of Hightown filing complaints about illegal residence?” Aveline suggested, from Varric’s other side.
“And smouldering~” Isabela finished for everyone, sprawled flat against the bench with her head in Aveline’s lap. “All dark and broody~ But with such pretty, pretty eyes~”
Aveline flicked a finger over Isabela’s nose, and Isabela broke down into giddy cackles that only put Anders more ill-at-ease.
“I don’t know what you can see in that murderous bigot,” he spat at Isabela.
“Might need your eyes checked then,” Isabela muttered under her breath, but still loudly enough for Anders to hear.
“And I wasn’t talking about any of that!” Anders spoke over her. “I’m saying he’s been different. He’s been acting strange ever since Hawke took us to the Bone Pit the other week!”
Or maybe it was even before that… Anders considered suspiciously. Fenris hadn’t complained nearly as much as expected about needing to share lunch with a ravenous blighted abomination on the trip up to Sundermount the week before.
Isabela snorted. “Well, if Hawke took you to the Bone Pit, just be glad neither of you came home walking funny~”
“Behave,” Aveline scolded, reaching to tug at a lock of Isabela’s hair.
Isabela swatted her away dismissively. “Oh, you all make it too easy,” she declared. “And anyone would act strange after getting dragged off to fight dragons at Hawke’s worst party venue.”
“No, but he’s been odd!” Anders insisted.
“Well, go on. Tell us what he did this time, Blondie?” Varric said, in an indulgent and condescending tone that made it clear he only meant to humour Anders.
“We were passing by the docks the other day,” Anders recalled. “I was remembering aloud about the scare with the Tranquil Solution – what would have happened to all those mages if the Divine hadn’t rejected the proposal…”
Anders felt his throat constrict at the memory of Ser Alrik and Ella. And then his chest swelled with fury remembering what Fenris had said, and how he had said it.
“And he told me that, if I was done acting persecuted, I might realise that Hawke invited everyone for snacks, and that it was my chance to get my fill of crab cakes and corn puffs!” he spat.
Varric and Aveline exchanged a look between themselves, before turning away. Aveline to include Isabela in their commiseration. Varric to address Anders.
“Yeah, that sounds… exactly like our broody elf,” he said apologetically.
“Unless he was talking about eating those crab cakes himself…” Aveline pondered.
“Not really selling the strange and unusual behaviour angle,” Varric finished for her.
Anders sputtered, unsure what about his story had failed to convince them.
“When I told him he didn’t have the temperament for a slave the other day, he said he would take it as a compliment!” he told them.
“If it bothers you so much, maybe don’t pay him any compliments to start with,” Isabela suggested.
“When I told him that the mages here are not what he saw in Tevinter, he said he had yet to meet a mage anywhere insufficiently cunning and opportune.”
“He sounds himself to me.” Aveline snorted indelicately. “Strangest thing here is your response, I’d say.”
Anders scowled.
Perhaps there was nothing so terribly out-of-character about anything Fenris had said specifically. Only… the way he had said them had been strange. Because he’d said it all as if none of it bothered him in the slightest – as if nothing about Anders bothered him in the slightest.
Fenris had said all of it in the plain and affectionate tones by which one acknowledged simple fact, and accepted it unconditionally. He had been utterly unguarded and without defence, as if he were trying to lure Anders in, lull Anders into a similarly unguarded state, and then spring whatever trap and whatever betrayal he intended without fear of reprisal.
But how to convince Varric and the others of this…
Anders realised he did have one simple way to prove Fenris was behaving strangely.
He reached into his pocket, and fingered the lacy fringe of the moss-green handkerchief that Fenris had given him – since laundered and folded by Anders himself.
The others could not argue that Fenris’s behaviour, in leaving Anders with such a gift, had been anything but peculiar.
But Anders felt somehow incapable – or more-so unwilling – to show this to the others. He felt, somehow, the handkerchief might disintegrate to dust if exposed to air and breath and daylight.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Anders announced, bolting to his feet. “I’ll prove to you he’s acting strange!”
Isabela let out a low suggestive whistle, at the same time Varric called after him:
“Just be careful not to go spraining anything, Blondie!”
Incapable of taking anything seriously, the two of them. Anders frowned harder and did his best to ignore them.
Fenris had moved onto his fourth ale of the afternoon. Having accepted his defeat at darts, he slumped back against the nearest table, drained half his mug, and watched Hawke and Merrill carry out their victory dance turned victory embrace turned victory kiss.
Facing away, he noticed Anders’s approach only belatedly. And even then he did not tense or startle. He only took another gulp of ale, and turned to Anders with loose arms and loose shoulders and the sort of grace that might have better suited a dancer.
He tilted his head up to meet his green-green eyes with Anders’s, and rolled his shoulders into what might have been a shrug.
Anders narrowed his eyes.
“Fenris,” he acknowledged tersely.
“Mage,” Fenris returned.
He lifted his mug up to polish off the rest of his drink, but his eyes remained firmly fixed upon Anders.
And, seriously, how were his eyes so damned green?! Like a forest or emeralds or a bloom of algae, as if they came out of some blighted poem!
Anders scowled, unsure of how to breach the topic of such un-Fenris-like behaviour with the man himself. His nose scrunched in fury, and when he opened his mouth he heard himself say:
“I take it you still support the Knight Commander.”
If Fenris was bothered by the insinuation, he did not show it.
He only shrugged and said, “I hesitate to call it support, but she is the only one holding back the madness in this city.”
“Holding back?” Anders demanded. “She's howling at the bloody moon! Even her own people think she's lost it!”
Fenris’s lip twitched, like this all amused him terribly.
“Mages in glass houses shouldn't throw fireballs,” he chastised softly. “But I admit there is a certain appeal…”
He trailed off, eyes flitting over Anders head to toe, as if appraising him.
“To what?!” Anders snapped viciously. “Her madness?! Mine?! Watching the city and my glass house collapse around me?!”
My fireballs?! he thought, and felt his face colour.
“Yes,” Fenris said unhelpfully.
Anders glared.
Fenris was mocking him again. Fenris was always mocking Anders – as if he didn’t think he had to say a single thing to win their arguments, because it was just sooooo self-evident how right he was.
Well, Fenris wasn’t going to win this argument.
“You’ve been acting strange,” Anders flung out his accusation.
“Have I?” Fenris parried.
“You’re up to something,” Anders pressed.
“Better than being up to nothing.” Fenris shrugged again.
Anders flinched, and reeled back. After everything he’d tried – all the work he’d put into the clinic and saving mages and–
“Is that what you think I’m up to?!” he demanded. “Nothing?!”
Fenris let out a snort, like a braying stallion.
“No,” he scoffed. “You are always up to something, mage. I was the one who, until late, had no feats to his name.”
Something about that made Anders wince and hiss – a sharp, pained inhale of breath.
Fenris was conceding something to him. And it should have made Anders happy, but something about it was too much. Instead of making Anders happy, it left him wary and afraid and miserable.
Anders reached into his pocket, and again rubbed his fingers against the moss-green handkerchief. It was soft and comforting.
“You left a handkerchief with me,” he said, feeling ashamed for some reason.
Fenris did not look away from Anders, nor hesitate to answer.
“I did.” His voice was flat and hard. It was not a question.
Anders felt mortified as his own voice broke into a pleading whine.
“Why?!” he cried.
Fenris blinked. His ears twitched. His lips twisted. And tilting his head, he looked as if he was seriously considering an answer to Anders’s question.
“I- I mean I don’t need linens from you!” Anders rushed out. “I have a whole clinic full of them. Lirene keeps them stocked.”
Anders huffed, and forced a few deep inhalations of breath.
“I don’t need it from you,” he assured. “I’ve already washed it, so I can return it to you anytime.”
“I see.”
Fenris’s expression was inscrutable, as he reached to set down the empty ale mug.
“If you have no use for the handkerchief,” he continued, far too calm and far too reasonable, “then you may return it.”
Oh.
A small sting seemed to pierce and spread through Anders’s chest. He stood, overcome for a moment by an absurd sense of loss and bewilderment.
Inside the pocket of Anders’s coat sat the handkerchief. Anders rubbed his index finger along the edge of the it once more and then, impulsively, clenched his fist and withdrew his hand, clutching nothing but empty air.
“Well, I don’t have it with me now, do I?!” Anders snarled, face contorting furiously.
If Fenris recognised the bald-faced lie, he didn’t bother to say. He only made a humming noise, acknowledging Anders’s statement.
His eyes panned downwards, and he braced both hands against the edge of table he was standing in front of. And, as he looked back up to meet Anders’s eyes, he leaned back with an almost imperceptible flex of his abdominal muscles. As if he was prepared to recline against the hard, flat surface, if the need arose.
“In that case… You are aware of where I make my residence in Hightown…” Fenris suggested. “You may drop by at any time to return it. My doors are open to you.”
Anders bristled with anger. Blighted smug bastard. It made him want to seize Fenris by the shoulders and slam him down against that blighted table.
But as the image played in Anders’s mind – reverberation from the impact vibrating through both their bodies, the grunt and wince that would pass over Fenris’s face – it wasn’t anger that was left in the wake of the thought, but fear and shame.
“I- I’ll just do that then!” Anders snapped, screwing his eyes shut and turning away.
Blindly, he shoved Hawke and Merrill out of the way, ignoring their protests as he ran for the exit of the Hanged Man.