oo1. closed.

[queasycrow]

CHARACTERS: Garrett Hawke and Fenris
LOCATION: Level 8, room 27.
WARNINGS: Beard.
SUMMARY: Puns about swords.

Escape giant large huge "ship" status: a work in progress.

It's become evident over the past few weeks that obtaining freedom is a lot trickier than Hawke might have otherwise supposed, even when taking into account the expectation that he is capable of doing things where others have previously failed. But the ratio of hero to ordinary person (and the news that he had been here before, one way or another) is also out of balance. He's only recently gotten a proper hang of how the doors work.

The other problem being Fenris' continued avoidance, which will make it difficult for when it's time to make a dashing exit -- the elf is heavier than he looks, and too wily to expect that hoisting him forcibly over a shoulder would be a sustainable solution of any kind.

(Hawke is not deeply this in denial, but there isn't much else to reflect on.)

He arrives at Fenris' door. He does not expect him to respond violently to his mere existence, but Hawke is wearing his armor all the same, comfortable in metal, leather, and fur, and strategically distinct. He had only spared a split second considering whether or not he should leave behind his staff, but he hasn't yet, for anything more involved than a late night bathroom break, and so its visible over his shoulder.

His gauntleted hand holds another weapon, though -- a sturdy greatsword of some significance, resting against his shoulder, his fingers dancing once around the grip before suring it up as he knocks, knuckles to metal.

Comments

[judex]

The pause before the door slides open is a silent one. He doesn't call out, he doesn't shuffle. He isn't wearing boots to clunk on the floor. But he is wearing more than he was last time they spoke, at least. A shirt and everything. Sweatpants. Bedhead, despite having been awake for some time.

He looks Hawke in the face, at the sword, a quick glance off the staff poking over his armored shoulder. Fenris did realize—it's not a small ship, but it is a small population. And he has been paying attention, from his wary distance. He realized, and he's still mad about it.

His gaze settles back on Hawke's face, and he doesn't glare. He's settled enough into resignation to be stony instead.

"I'm busy," he says.

There's an open bottle on the bureau visible behind him.

[queasycrow]

Hawke's posture straightens by a hair as the door slides open, a glance chasing it as it disappears into the wall, then meeting that look. He's not sure if stony resignation is far better than glaring, but he hadn't expected, you know, a hug.

"Funny that, I'd timed this for when you're not. I'll make it quick, shall I."

Or he'll have this conversation at the pace he'd intended, but he sort of just. Shoves that assurance in there like a wedge to keep the door from closing on his face. It's only a little dry.

The sword comes around, held tight by its grip, hand light beneath the heavy steel that makes up its blade. He doesn't look down at it as he says; "I was hoping you could clear up something for me."

[judex]

Fenris does look down at it, hands curling at his sides, not quite into fists. He has missed—

He has a gun. It's more useful by almost every measure.

This would be easier if this person—Hawke, in his head, still has something like air quotes around it, even though he understands the man isn't an imposter, really. Not an intentional one. But it would be easier if he were less familiar. If the rise and fall of his voice weren't just right, aside from how much deeper it is. But even if Fenris were on the verge of not resenting his existence, he would still resent the staff at his back, and the practical effect on his expression and posture would be the same. Blankly sullen, with his shoulders hunched inward, self-protective and pissed. All that's missing is a dwarf to make a crack about brooding.

"I doubt I know anything you don't," he says.

[queasycrow]

Hawke is only starting to grasp the concept of guns, meanwhile.

And so probably overestimates the value of the soon-to-be gift he keeps hefted on display, not yet expecting Fenris to take it, at least not without prompt. "That's true," he allows. "You'd given me a proper history lesson, the first time. Along with with the light show. Forged for the Imperium as symbols of honour amongst their ranks."

His free hand drifts over it as he's seen Fenris do before -- a glow shines, but not brightly, along the rivets marked through steel.

"The blade is yours," he says, not quite with the same knowing relish as the first time -- but simple and factual, turning hilt over. "You'd called it ironic."

[judex]

"It was," Fenris says.

He isn't referring to the irony; he's still entertained enough by the idea that there's a twitch in the corner of his mouth, brief and minuscule, a few millimeters of movement short of being recognizable as a buried smile. Or maybe it still is, to someone who knows him that well.

Anyway: the blade was his, that's what he means. Almost. The blade was someone's. Someone with the courtesy—or lack of it—to have the same face and name and sex that Fenris does, but someone different. Still, he takes the hilt and holds the sword in both hands, blade against flat palm. It's a light hold, the same as he'd use to examine someone else's weapon and promptly return it.

His interest in the craftsmanship isn't faked, but it's also terribly convenient. He doesn't look up when he says, "I'm not who you knew, either."

[queasycrow]

Hawke isn't making gesture like he expects it back. No take backsies, suggest the hands coming to rest on his own hips, watching Fenris examine it, pondering a little about what the 'was' is meant to imply.

"You do bear a remarkable resemblance," he says. "More scowling than usual, though."

But may he should acknowledge that. Even if something in him stubbornly denies any such thing. Looking at Fenris is now very much like looking at Fenris moments before his memory of Thedas begins to grow foggy and he wound up here. "I'm sorry, about her leaving," he says, anyway. That much, he can say. "If you were friends as we-- are. Were. You know what I mean."

[judex]

Fenris scowls on cue, catches himself doing it, and smooths his face back out before he turns it up toward Hawke. And he doesn't snap. He doesn't melt, either, but there are signs of thought other than no no no, like greenery (more likely a weed or thorns than flowers, but green nonetheless) poking through snow, when he meets Hawke's wrong-colored eyes and apparently spares an additional moment for examining his beard like he's never seen one before.

"It's happened before," he says. "Not to me. Aveline was here for a time, and she remembered—" Appreciate this, Garrett. "—Marian differently."

He lowers the sword as an afterthought, tip to ground. The noise wakes the cat (nameless) that had been sleeping under the bed in the room behind him, but he only emerges far enough to stare out the door.

"Not so drastically," Fenris adds. Unnecessarily. Marian isn't really a name that goes with a beard. Also: "Neither of them were mages."

[queasycrow]

Hawke -- ~Garrett~ -- does appreciate it, detectable only in the lines that print deeper at the corners of his eyes, but he doesn't interrupt, certainly not to highlight it. Nor show notice as to the study he's receiving that feels a little closer than it had been when they first met. It was probably all the blind rage getting in the way.

That last part sort of catches him. A guarded kind of realisation settles as stillness in his face, comprehension animated in his eyes.

Well. That's something.

He looks at the cat. The cat looks at him, offering no solutions. He looks back at Fenris. "Ours was a friendship borne of dramatic irony," sounds a bit like a pitch, really, hands raising to show palms. Or would, if not for the leather and metal. "We laughed, we cried, we killed a lot of slavers." His hands lower, humour lapsing to show sharp curiousity left behind. "The mage rebellion must have at least been a constant; I'm not that important."

And it hadn't cut so personally for him as it had, say, Anders, or the many hundreds of mages feeling the knife edge of oppression and low expectations. Not since Ferelden. But it had been the right and only thing to do, something he'd believed in, and Fenris had fought with him, despite everything.

[judex]

Not that important. He doesn't smile—let's not get crazy—but the responsive skeptical slant of his eyebrows isn't entirely ill-humoured. Possibly the happy talk of murdering slavers carrying him through the downer of mage rebellions. (He can't begin to conceive of a Hawke who supported the Templars. No one ever chooses that route in the game anyway.)

"I think it would take more than one person to divert Anders from his course," he says, dry.

But it's Hawke's name everyone shouts. And even if Hawke—Marian—was herself not a mage, there was Bethany to think of. He assumes that's a constant as well. He rolls the hilt of the sword in his hand, blade turning back and forth to catch artificial light. His guard lowers just enough to allow one foot to fidget against the floor, which isn't very far, but still a bit.

The cat lies back down, half out from under the bed, and watches Hawke with placid interest. It's used to strangers by now.

Fenris hesitates. It's a very obvious hesitation: a glance away at nothing, twitching ears. "Was I—he—" This is very confusing. "—very insulting?"

[queasycrow]

There's a fond twist to the subtle smirk Hawke gives in return.

"Only if you view 'mage' as an especially biting barb. Although you do have a certain inflection that makes it sound like something else."

Not too terribly, then. Perhaps an expected amount, or even less than that -- Fenris had thrown in his lot with Garrett, mage or no mage, and it doesn't take too much insight -- Hawke believes, anyway -- to understand at least something about where that anger comes from. The direction is truly takes. Perhaps that's why it seems to slide off him as if armour polished to a sheen was for that effect only.

And he took the sword as it was meant to be -- a gift, irony or no irony.

Fire crackling in the hearth. The private quarters of the Amell Estate are shrouded in fire light and shadow, but warmly, defense against a brewing war beyond. Even back then, it still felt strange, very big and very grand, but it made for a fun game of pretend that started to settle into something more sincere, towards the end. That he could be content in a cave or a castle is neither here nor there.

Fenris, standing at the door of his room on the Tranquility, will experience a moment of double vision. He sees himself, pain written plain in his expression, turning away. "I didn't come here to burden you."

The memory of reaching out, impulsive (and unwise); Hawke's hand landing on his arm. "You don't need to leave, Fenris."

White lyrium cuts harsh through soft fire light, zithering bright through the lines in his skin, Fenris rounding on him; strong hands, shoving him back into the wall behind him, rough. The memory brings with it the sense of falling from indecision to decision (a flash of adrenaline that he feels in his chest, draining lower immediately), and Hawke stepping back into his space in insistent, bristly kiss.

The world turns. It's Fenris' back into the wall, and Hawke over and against him.

In the present, none of this happens. The memory slots in seamlessly as if it were known information brought to forethought. Speaking of irony, it's the same second in which Hawke decides that speaking any further on versions of Fenrises can wait for a later time before going into more graphic detail, should he ever do that at all.

[judex]

They were making some weird sort of progress. His mouth opens to continue making that weird progress. It's a talent, Fenris would have said—possibly—with the sort of tolerant amusement he'd aim at Anders on a good day, toward the end, when the mage was familiar and owed him forty sovereigns from losing at cards and hadn't yet blown anything up—if the only thing that passed from Hawke to him had been that smirk and comment.

But, you know. Never mind.

The scene sits there at the forefront of his mind, unobtrusive but unavoidable, while he soundlessly shuts his mouth and narrows his eyes. He needs a moment to understand it, because it's strange, seeing yourself—feeling things about yourself, that's a paragraph unto itself, cut here for brevity—but he does. He's quick.

"Stop," he says.

He also understands that it isn't always voluntary. That doesn't stop him taking a step back into his room, dragging the sword tip on the ground. The cat disappears back beneath the bed.

He doesn't wait for a stop what. "You're sharing memories," he says. "You and he—"

It was easier not to say I there than before. Added distance. He's never—right now, overwhelmed and angry, he's sure he would never.

[queasycrow]

The temperature of the immediate vicinity seems to plummet before Hawke even knows why, brow pinching, and a stop what primed and ready on the tip of his tongue.

He blinks stupidly across at Fenris.

Then kind of realises after that. There are any number of moments he could have projected across at the man who looks so much like the man he knows better, and practically is, his own idea of it cementing in the same moment Fenris' own notion splinters all the further.

"That's-- a mistake," he says, just in case, a hand going out at a hover. Fenris steps back into the room and sort of by instinct he steps forward. Internally, he quests blindly for whatever is making him leak, although he has no real sense of it himself. "I should explain. I didn't come here to do that, but--"

[judex]

"Explain," Fenris repeats.

It isn't a command or an invitation. Too skeptical for that. How could you possibly with a pinch of you've explained well enough already thank you, all while holding a sword and looking at Hawke like he's.

There is no good simile here. Like he's a mage with whole mountain ranges of muscles who's tried cramming into the much smaller shape of the Hawke Fenris knows and loves, awkwardly and grotesquely, and has now also crammed an awkward and grotesque memory into Fenris' head.

He swings the sword up onto his shoulder with a familiarity that could not be killed by a year of guns or a whole lifetime of never having held this particular weapon. There might be a decent simile somewhere in there, at least. An analogy to the way he's glaring at Hawke. If it weren't familiar—personal—despite the beard and mountainy muscles, he wouldn't look quite so fierce.

"I would rather you didn't."

[queasycrow]

He could keep talking. Fenris could shut the door in his face and then Hawke could just raise his voice slightly. But truthfully, he doesn't actually know what to say -- he hadn't been lying when he said he hadn't come here to talk about that and so words, unprepared, aren't fighting to come out when Fenris cuts him short.

What he had come here to do was give him the sword. No puns intended. That much, he's managed.

"True. I suppose it spoke for itself," he says, casual affect not all the way insincere -- what is sincere comes from a place of grim humour. He doesn't look at the weapon that Fenris has handled, studying big elf eyes and the shut down occurring in and around them. It's not a new obstacle -- it just is that. An obstacle. "Have a good night, Fenris."

It feels like strategic retreat. It also feels terrible and he's pretty sure a crack has opened up in the firm muscle that is his heart, but it is also strategic retreat, turning his shoulder to the door and heading away before Fenris can force him, without glance back.

[judex]

That's what he wanted—really, genuinely, it's too soon for mixed feelings—but it feels off somehow anyway. When he runs, he's used to being followed. When he shoves he expects to be shoved back. Hawke's disappearance from his doorframe is a missed step, or silence after shouting into a cave to cause an echo.

He doesn't go to the door to watch Hawke goes. He goes to the door to close it behind him, and leaning his head out to check on his progress down the corridor is—whatever.

He scowls.

Now that the man is out of the way, the cat comes out for real and slinks around Fenris' ankles into the corridor, off to find someone else to beg attention from, and Fenris scowls at him, too.