Chapter Text
Everything hurt.
He felt weighed down by a cloying pressure that began in his chest and seemed to spread throughout his body like an insidious poison. A pain with a coporeal source; a twisted muscle, an oozing wound, even the ache of the markings, that he could have dealt with. But this, there had been no horror or humiliation during his life in bondage that had ever made him shut down so completely as this.
The thick fog rolling by outside the window made it feel as if nothing else at all existed outside of the room, and as far as he cared nothing did. The grey sunlight that sifted in caught a clutter of empty wine bottles set upon a roughly hewn end table, casting speckles of red light across a slightly tattered letter marked with the seal of the Merchant's Guild.
His greatsword lay discarded on the floor beside a wardrobe with a now mostly splintered door hanging off its hinges. If the patrons and staff of the inn had heard the commotion no one had dared to come investigate. As it were he had long since fallen silent, sitting slumped in the corner by the window where he had been for the better part of two days. Attempting to simply stop existing was preferable to allowing the grief to overtake him.
He had found something he had never thought to hope for, had never even thought to want, and with it the beginnings of a new life. But like so many other things it had been stripped from him. He blamed himself for leaving so much left unsaid between them, and now Hawke had gone and walked into the Void where he would have gladly followed if he only could. It was with these embittered thoughts that Fenris had fallen into a fitful slumber against the wall with the lines of lyrium tracing his flesh slowly coming alive.
----
He had been dreaming of Hawke near constantly for the past few weeks and had, at the time, refused to take it as an ill omen. As he observed Hawke now, suspended by snaking, silvery strands that somewhat resembled a spider's web, the fog of dreaming began to lift from his mind.
That's when he realized he was in the Fade.
Fenris felt his jaw clench, or at least imagined he did, if he was to believe how being concious in the Fade worked. He considered that the vision before him could be a demon's trap, or it could be a dream afterall and he was just apparently determined to drive himself mad. Hawke's head was lowered, his eyes glazed over, and as Fenris drew closer he became aware that the mage was softly whispering to himself.
"I'm sorry, it's all my fault-"
Phantasimal spirits loomed around Hawke's trappings, taking form with his thoughts. For only an instant Fenris could glimpse what Hawke was seeing in his tormentors; Leandra, ghoulishly stitched and animated by a deranged blood mage; Carver, his skin and eyes discolored with the Darkspawn taint, bound to those who coerced Hawke into releasing Corypheus. The third was a dark-haired young woman Fenris didn't recognize, her body crushed and blood running from her nose.
"It's all my fault, I'm sorry, it's all my fault-"
Hawke repeated the words like a mantra.
Fenris' voice carried an ethereal reverb when he called out to him. Hawke stirred, groggily raising his face as recognition slowly cleared his glassy stare, "You-" gasped Hawke, "Fenris. It's you-"
Through will alone Fenris brought his dreaming form up to Hawke's level in complete disregard of the shifting terrain. He raised a hand to Hawke's cheek only to watch it pass right through him, the captive mage smiling sadly in return as he strained against the webs to lean closer.
"I'm sorry," said Hawke, and Fenris was worried he'd just continue in his mindless mutterings, "I left you behind. I'm- I'm so sorry, love. Please. You can go on without me.”
Back in that bleak room Fenris had ceased to function under the weight of his grief, shutting it all out to protect himself from it. Now everything surged to the surface in a great rush that at first manifested itself as anger, the emotion he was still most comfortable with, “Venhedis, Hawke!" he practically snarled, "I will not allow you to do this!" As Fenris ineffectually grasped at the webs holding his lover, trying in vain to pull them apart, Hawke slowly lowered his head and said no more.
Anger was soon replaced by unfamiliar desperation, "Please, Hawke," Fenris pleaded in a tone that surprised even himself, "I need you. Tell me how to free you from this!" He tore again at the webs, a blue lyrium glow igniting from his arms.
Suddenly, he became aware of a presense. It was a forboding chill on the edge of the mind, an icey grip around the heart, a crushing pressure on the ribs that choked out all but the base animalistic instinct to survive. An enormous shape lumbered forth behind the webs holding Hawke, its grotesque form melting in from the shadows. From seemingly every corner of the creature's realm came a booming, inhuman voice.
YOUR BITE WILL NOT AVAIL YOU HERE, LITTLE WOLF
Fenris awoke with a strangled shout, his bloodshot green eyes roving frantically about the room. He sat for a few moments longer while he waited for the frenzied hammering of his heart to subside.
Hawke was alive.
There was still the possibility that he had gone mad, that his desperate mind had created a fiction for him to cling to. His eyes landed on the opened letter. Where was it that Varric had been writing from?
The heart of the Inquisition. Skyhold.
His fingers scrabbled against the walls as he struggled to stand, shaking the feeling back into his leaden feet as he went. After long hours spent in a near catatonic state he was now moving with renewed purpose, stalking about the room to collect his meager affects. He looked again to the letter and after a moment's hesitation snatched it up, shoving it into one of the pouches on his belt.
He donned his familiar gauntlets, wrapped his cloak securely around his shoulders, and soon had the comforting weight of his greatsword at his back. Without so much as a last look around he threw open the door and loped down the stairs, heedless of the wary glances cast by the patrons as he left the inn, vanishing like a ghost into the dreary morning fog.