Open To Anyone For Anything RP Post

[questionablewit]

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[lyriumbound]

Fenris is as stubborn as the Champion of Kirkwall. He doesn't give up, not when he's made up his mind. Ten years it took him to get his revenge on Danarius. And it had been worth every second of it when he got to kill the bastard. And even after nearly ruining his chance with Hawke, he'd never left her.

It went beyond saying that he thought her worth all the trouble. She'd thought he was worth her time after all.

As he continues forward, he finds himself again on top of Adamant Keep in the Western Approach. Things have calmed down. Rutherford and Lavellan are hugging. Varric and he are waiting, looking around for someone else. The Wardens are rallying behind Stroud. And yet, she never shows.

She's gone. She didn't want to deal with living with you and your difficult disposition.

A thought not his own and it rankles. It strikes where he's most vulnerable, because of course it does. He's seen enough Demons, learned his lesson when they'd last been to the Fade to save the half-elven Dreamer, to know that they prey upon the chinks in one's armor to steal your will. He won't fall for that again.

He opens his mouth to voice his defiance, but words spoken by Merrill are what he thinks about. Demons hate to be ignored. Especially if they think it's their territory. At the time, he'd cuttingly replied that she was the expert on consorting with demons, but her words were right then as they are now. One foot in front of the other, he makes himself leave the rooftop of Adamant Keep and walk away another time, though it feels like fire under his skin to do so.

The sound of a somewhat familiar voice catches his attention and he turns warily, ready for a fight but a part of him cautiously hoping that it not be another demon. Instead of following Varric, or being pulled away by Rutherford and his men, Fenris heads after the damn voices, determined to find the source. For good or for ill.

[questionablewit]

Hawke wanders through memories. A lot of them involve corpses, which definitely says something about her life. Her mother stumbles towards her, wearing a white wedding dress, grotesque and so much missed that it hurts even now, and Hawke steels her jaw and cuts the demon down without a word, ignoring Nightmare's taunts about how she was too late, always too late, isn't it tragic? A few minutes here would have saved Carver or her mother, a few minutes there would have stopped Anders, a few minutes here would have gotten her back through the Rift and into Fenris' arms.

"You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you? Centuries and centuries of monologuing. You're not a fear demon, much less The fear demon, you're a demon of non-stop talking." She says it all conversationally, casually, as though he's not getting under her skin, as though he can't.

And when the Inquisitor fails? When she falls before Corypheus, a ragged pile of bones at his feet, and the world is his...how will you be remembered then, Champion? It was you who freed him to begin with. All his sins are heaped on your back.

"Seriously, what do you talk about when you don't have some poor mortal trapped in here with you? Do you try to intimidate rocks? That must have kept you busy for ages. I bet you were making great progress, too. That one over there certainly looks startled."

Teo stops, turns his head, whines in confusion. Hawke pats his head and to please him looks around. There are blurred figures everywhere--dreamers, spirits, ghosts, Fade whatnot--but whatever it is Teo is sensing, she doesn't see it yet.

[lyriumbound]

It's the realm of dreams. He knows that. Only the dwarves can't enter this place while they sleep. But still, Varric, Stroud, Lavellan and the Seeker and that obnoxious Tevene mage returned from being there physically. Lavellan twice now, evidently.

He doesn't care about them. They can all hang themselves for all that they're trying to save the world, save the world from Corypheus and the Imperium. Fucking Magisters will destroy the world. Danarius might not have been the strongest of them, but he was there when they first met the ancient Darkspawn Magister and the claims. He knew what they were capable of doing, how much they didn't care about anything but power and one-upping each other. It didn't make a difference if they did in the name of power or their Old Gods or whatever crap was in the Andrastian Chant of Light.

He stops at the sound of her voice and looks around. Time, distance, space, none of it matters in a place like this. It never matters. Past, present, future all combine, collide, ruin, stretch. The Fade, the Beyond, this fucking place, things make a lot of sense and they make no sense at all. Nothing is real here, and yet it's all too real. He has to stop himself from hoping. Has to.

Besides, none of this looks like anything he recognizes. It's not Minratheous, Kirkwall, Skyhold, Adamant Keep in the Western Approach. It just looks generic dreaming crap, outcrops and water and nothing else worth mentioning. Featureless, things he'll forget about when he wakes up. But something makes him keep going foward, searching for anything, a sign.

sorry, weirdly all my notifs for this page got lost and I didn't realize!

[questionablewit]

Teo suddenly lets out a yelp and dashes off, and Hawke has to whirl to following him, suddenly wondering if it's possible for mabari to have their own particular illusions, if they'd be fooled by them, if they're immune. Do dogs dream? That sounds like a philisophical question for the ages (at least, to a Ferelden).

"Teo!" It's a sharp, concerned call, almost unheard of, she's almost never had to call her mabari back to her side. Neither of them is really running so much as limping along but he's still faster than she is.

And when she catches up to him he's prancing in circles around an image of Fenris, and that's confusing, because she's pretty sure he'd recognize a demon or spirit. Wouldn't he? He hasn't reacted to any of the others, except to attack them.

[lyriumbound]

The last thing Fenris ever thought he'd be greeted with is Hawke's dog, Teo. While he and the mabari have always gotten along well enough that it's good to see the animal, but it does make him wonder where his owner is.

And then he hears her voice again and his attention is immediately drawn from they very real, very happy dog to her. Suddenly, everything hurts, not physically because has no body here. It hurts nonetheless, in ways that the lyrium tattoos could never pain him.

"Hawke?"

[questionablewit]

The sound of the voice saying her name hurts, more than the sight of him. She's been seeing visions of all sorts since she arrived, hearing things. It's the Fade, and everything in it is a lie, a mirage, an allegory. Everything means something else, and most of it wants to feed on her emotions. The way she feels about Fenris would be a feast to any number of spirits/demons/whatever in here. Several feasts: one for the love, one for the guilt, one for the grief, one for the fear...

She gives it (not him, can't be, this must be an it) one brief, scorchingly pained look and forces her attention back to Teo. "Come on, old boy, you know better than this." She looks injured and sounds tired, and she's not moving right. Not smoothly. "Don't give them an opening like that."

Teo shoots her a look, the one that means he thinks she's being painfully obtuse, and she frowns, looking back at the Fenris-image with more consideration. It makes her heart ache to even consider the possibility Teo is insisting is the case. "...Fenris?" she asks, not sure why she does, wondering how it could be proved or disproved one way or another.

[lyriumbound]

He's learned to recognize her looks over the years. And then one she gives him is a very nuanced thing: disgust, anger, pain, sadness, and even a bit of fear. It's not a look he's had thrown in his direction before and he doesn't like it.

Even if he knows this is the Fade and that he shouldn't trust anything here. Even still. It's cruel that whatever spirits or demons reside in this place would choose Hawke and her mabari to torture him with. It's too much.

And yet, it's not enough. It's obvious that she's injured (Teo too), possibly serious. It's obvious that she's not moving like he knows she can, has. If this is a dream, it's a nightmare, because he never wanted to see her like this. She's always been strong and beautiful, lethal and lithe, cocky and cunning. The few times she's been rundown and nearly broken have been years in the past. He'd hoped to never see her like that again.

He'd also never really thought he'd lose her either. Not again. But here they are.

He can feel his face want to start and stop a lot of different emotions. When it settles on something, he's not sure if he can name it. Most of all, he feels an intense longing to hold her and help her stay safe, get her the hell out of this fucking shit hole. "You didn't come back with the rest of them."

ftr I'd be all for an extremely unlikely rescue if you'd like to go that way

[questionablewit]

It's what Fenris would say. Probably it's what a Fenris-shaped-demon would say too, so she still looks wary. But the emotions that cycle through his face, those are more convincing. Demons aren't imaginative; they pick one emotion and run with it to the Void and back. They don't shuffle through a dozen, trying and failing to settle on just one.

Fenris. Much as she loves him, she's not certain she wouldn't prefer a demon, in the circumstances. There's no way to explain that he'll accept, and she can't really blame him. "Someone had to distract it so everyone could get out."

Not an answer calculated to please him, for all that it's true.

That sounds very unlikely, but it's Hawke and Fenris, so.....

[lyriumbound]

"And that someone had to be you? Venhedis. Did it never occur to you that it could be someone else? That more people would miss you, as opposed to the damn Warden?!"

He hadn't planned on yelling. In fact, he hadn't planned on anything, but her half-way casual remark about her own fate is so mindbogglingly infuriating that he's sure that if she were in front of him in the flesh, he'd shake her until her head popped off. It's so typically her, so flippant and so nonchalant that he hates it.

And for half a second, he hates her.

That feeling doesn't last, because it can't. They've meant too much to one another over the years, for him to allow it to end like this. He loves her far too much than is prudent, he thinks.

"It always has to be you, doesn't it?"

It's also Dragon Age. Unlikely things are a stock-in-trade.

[questionablewit]

Her smile is a little fey. "Champion." Again, it's a glib answer, true but only the gloss of the truth, and if she was entirely convinced this was Fenris she might be more thoughtful in her answers. Maybe. If she weren't so damn tired. The irony, of being tired in the Fade...

She shakes her head a little, because a mind that wanders is a bad thing in here. "But it did have to be me. The other two--no one else could do what they need to do, out there--" She waves vaguely in no direction, out in the real world, as opposed to in here.

And Corypheus was her responsibility. She woke him, her blood; she didn't kill him dead enough the first time. Fenris knows that, he was there when it happened. He was there when she first found out Corypheus was responsible for all the shit going on, too.

Though Hawke also knows Fenris too well to think any of that will really matter a damn to him.

Well, fuck. Hawke groans and pushes her hair back from her face. "And anyway, it's not as though there was time to play rock-paper-scissors for the privilege. We had seconds, before Nightmare ate all of us alive. What the hell else was I supposed to do? Let them die, knowing the world would go straight to shit without them?" She sighs and pushes her hair back from her face. It's not flippant. It's just tired.

That's it. That's the canon.

[lyriumbound]

His anger bubbles over and he slams his clawed, gloved fist into the nearest structure, not really affecting it much. "You are more than that!"

She should know that by now. She's the one that taught him that he was more than the role he'd been shuffled into by fate. He's not going to let her try and take on every burden herself as well.

"Maybe the damn Inquisitor is needed, but let the damn Wardens clean up the mess they've been making for well over a thousand years!" He doesn't hate Stroud, but to see the man come out of the Fade with the Inquisitor instead of Marian and Teo was—still is—unacceptable. "What do you expect me to tell your sister? That you went stupidly noble and now she must mourn your loss as well as that of the rest of your family?!"

It's dirty and he knows it. He doesn't give a flying fuck anymore.

It is. And just think of how fun it will be for him to be angry at her in person.

[questionablewit]

It's the lowest of low blows, and he knows it, though he doesn't realize it cuts even deeper than it normally would after all Nightmare's taunts. And it finally spurs her into anger of her own, as she shouts right back. "There was no time! We didn't have a leisurely polite debate, Fenris! There was a demon larger than the fucking Gallows on our tail and about half a second to act! You think I would have chosen this way to go otherwise? Trapped in the fucking Fade fighting yet another Maker-damned spider?"

She doesn't know if he can touch her, if she can touch him, in here. She doesn't even know if he's real. The temptation to slap him is still tempting. If it's a demon killing time by getting under her skin, it's working.

She leans a hand against a rock (or something that looks and mostly feels like rock, at least, fucking Fade). She is so goddamned tired, and so angry, and so tired. "So yes, you tell Bethany I went stupidly noble, and tell her I'm sorry. And while you're at it, tell yourself, because the last thing I remember saying while I ran towards that hell beast was apologizing to you and wishing we had more time. Asshole."

By the time he gets her in the flesh (and safe) I don't think there will be words...

[lyriumbound]

Just like his words were meant to cut her, her words strike him to his core. He can feel the desire to scream, rage, murder, and cry all war until something wordless bubbles up in his throat and lets loose all of those emotions before he can clamp down on them.

If they were actually in battle, he'd be able to channel the emotions and pain into destruction, but they've been left blessedly alone now. Maybe the demons are finding it more amusing to let them tear at each other than to do anything to distract them.

"I won't accept that. I can't!" The words are out before he can stop them but he also doesn't want to take them back. "There has to be another way, and you're a bigger idiot than you normally are if you think that Varric and I would allow you to stay trapped here."