002 - Looks like a discoball and tastes like strawberries and dreams

[wolfuncaged]

Who: Fenris and you!
Broadcast: Video: Fleetwide
Action: Tourist.
When: Today. SPONSOR DROP for all characters who have started a romance aboard the Fleet



[Fenris had a very unsettled night, sleep wasn't the cards after his run in with Cole. Eventually, he does leave his armory to find breakfast. He goes by way of the cargo hold (just to check the horrible little wretch isn't lurking there) but instead finds a gift basket with his name on. Fenris can't read the rest of what's on it, but the gift basket is full of condoms, lubes and other sundries that only naked people will really have use for. Emblazoned on everything is Madame Gertrude's Pleasure Barn. Not only has Fenris been given one, but any character who have decided to indulge in a little romance, up to and including flirting has been sent one. The Fleet has got itself a sponsor. For today, at least.

Fenris is well aware what these things are (thanks, Exisilium) so it's with a largely bemused expression that he turns on his communicator, pointing at the...gift. ]

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who has been given one of these today. I suppose Atroma expects us to be grateful? Though it is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face.

Comments

[forcemageure]

[shit]

Oh, you know. Space rays and whatever else. Who knows what they do to people! We might all wake up blue tomorrow. ...bluer, in your case.

[wolfuncaged]

...No. They do not. I lived in space for months, that never happened.

[The arms are folding. Warning, the arms are folding. He's not backing down. ]

What are you talking about? [He repeats, slower this time.] From what I understand, you get out of the mess in Kirkwall just fine.

[forcemageure]

It's--look, it's nothing worth talking about. If I had a sovereign for every time my mouth ran away with my face I'd still be absurdly wealthy. I'd be able to make a coat out of the bloody things.

[wolfuncaged]

It would stop you being able to run away as well.

Hawke.

[Yep. It's the tone. It's the 'I'm going to know this thing, or I'm going to find you and make you tell me' tone. It's the best tone. ]

[forcemageure]

[ Fenris is one of Hawke's best friends. Fenris is his family. He's more honest with their merry band of misfits than he is anyone else, but paradoxically he also reaches a point where that honesty hits a wall and goes straight up, because family is also what's most important to protect. ]

Talking about it isn't going to change anything, and you won't thank me for telling you. I'm asking you as a friend to consider it dropped.

[wolfuncaged]

[Fenris' frown deepens. There's so much he doesn't know, or rather only knows from what others have told him about the future of Thedas. None of it sounds good. Anders destroying the chantry, the civil war, the sky tearing apart and raining fucking demons. It all sounds terrible.

But all of that pales in comparison to the horrible, gut-wrenching realisation of what Hawke's getting at. He may not get along with the Hawke he knows back home, but Hawke is, indeed, his family. No matter what shape he (or she) takes, his remains a complete truth. It feels like the floor has been taken from under him, and it shows in his face. His shoulders drop, his expression softens.

This isn't fair. ]

...Oh. [It's all he can manage, and even that comes out shaky and wrong. ]

[forcemageure]

[ Hawke's vulnerability and loss-of-control levels max out in tandem; as a result he very nearly reaches out to change Video to Voice. After a second he settles for just looking at his hands in his lap, out of view, watching them stretch white at the knuckles like they belong to someone else. ]

It's not so bad. I'm here, aren't I?

[ He is very, very good at keeping a smile on his face. ]

[wolfuncaged]

[But he's not THERE. Fenris closes his eyes, trying to control his breathing. How can it be that Hawke would just be...gone? Erased from the world, just like that? He doesn't want to believe it's real. He wants desperately for this to be an ill timed joke on Hawke's part. When he opens his eyes to look at his friend, he sees it really isn't, and he feels something in his heart break.

He'd be nothing without Hawke. Either dead or back with Danarius, collared and chained once again. Hawke has undoubtedly been the single most important thing to ever happen to him. He gave Fenris friends, a family, the shaky building blocks on which to build himself a new life. To live as he saw fit. He owes Hawke everything, and without him... what is the world without him? ]

How?

[He needs to know. For a horrible moment, he wishes he could go back to Exsilium, take one of their transporters, find a way to fix this. He could make things messier than they already were, but it would be a worthwhile price if he can save the first person who actually made the world a place he wanted to live in. ]

[forcemageure]

[ Hawke has immediate answers for everything, as quick and dirty as a tourniquet, and this is no different. He has yet to meet a situation that didn't, and now, in the technical sense, he never will. ]

Someone had to, I suppose.

[ That's a why, not a how, but how is--how is his to carry, not a burden, but a right. It belongs to him the same way it belonged to Malcolm Hawke: because he chose it. Only the most solipsistic of Inquisitors thinks their decision was anything but varnish on an already sealed door. Hawke likes to think - had thought, hearing the one-two one-two of his own boots pick up speed, feeling power gather in him, fire that would husk him out and cauterize what was left - his father would have wanted it that way.

(A lie, he knows. Maybe he would have been proud anyway; that would have been enough.) ]

I don't remember much about how, and if I'm not interested in dredging that particular lake of memory you'll have to indulge me. Though speaking of memory I don't suppose you'll have forgotten that incident with the Carta--the weird demony ones, not the normal throat-slitter sorts.

[ If he hasn't stopped joking yet there's absolutely no way he will now. What Hawke could tell a person about a smile is that they make great walls: too shiny to see inside, too slick to climb. ]

The magister the Wardens locked up didn't have the courtesy to stay dead when we killed him, that's the problem. What happened...what happened is that I let him out. Every person who died at the Conclave, from the Divine down to the rats in the bloody floorboards, everyone who's died since--that's on me.

I don't know what the Inquisitor's told you. Just know that in any world it seems only whoever wears that Mark can stop him - Corypheus - from tearing Thedas apart. I [ an infinitesimal pause, dissolved before it can occupy even the space of a breath ] I stayed, so she could keep fighting.

[ 'Stayed', without the context of the Fade and the Nightmare, means nothing. Not as a word, anyway. It hardly matters. That's just what he's saying instead of what really happened, as if never saying it aloud, never even phrasing it in thought, means there might be a way back.

If there were, he's not even sure he'd take it. He's been tired since the Chantry. He's tired now. ]

It was a chance. A chance to fix things. Or to--well, as they say, die trying. [ A laugh bubbles over his lips like mercury, as genuine as any he's ever loosed. ] I just wish I knew if it bloody worked, that's all.

[wolfuncaged]

[Fenris is silent, listening but not listening. He feels distant, detached. As if he's watching all of this and not actively taking part in any of it. An audience to the worst play in the universe. ]

Yes. They have told me much of what happens. [Another pause, then firmly:] It wasn't your fault. None of us knew what was going to happen in that prison.

[He wishes they'd never gone there, never followed that stupid fucking lead. This one single act has torn everything apart. ]

As if you haven't done enough for the world already. It shouldn't have been you. You've earned your right to stop being the hero.

[He feels sick. He wants to rage against the world and hide away and shut it out at the same time. ]

[forcemageure]

Yes, now I can retire to my intended purpose: terrible, often smelly, yet ultimately lucrative errands!

[ Just ...let him have that the most comfortable way to deal with this is 'badly.' As the exaggerated wince evinces. He's actually looking at the camera and therefore Fenris now, crooked smile holding itself up. That's progress, however small. ]

You know I hate it when people use the H word. No one pays heroes for doing anything, and noble gestures raise a truly unsightly rash. I made a choice. At best I'm happy with it, and at worst--well, no one could've stopped me anyway. Not even you.

[ He knows what ties their ungainly little group together is that nothing does; a human, former Circle mage will go on to fight Corphyeus; Fenris knew a man with daggers and a fist like iron; Anders is a decade too young and a countenance far too light; 'you' doesn't really apply. It seems important to say anyway, because the trouble with the world is that it keeps turning, and Fenris still has to live there. He hasn't touched whether or not he's at fault for any of this; if that's an argument he can avoid ever having, he will. The smart part of him knows it's irrational, and the guilty part doesn't care. ]

[wolfuncaged]

No. I am well aware that once you set your mind to something, there is little that can be done about it.

[You, him, her, them. They're all Hawke. Perhaps his will not meet the same fate, perhaps he will. Perhaps the Hawke he met in Exsilium; the lady mage who loved a Fenris he simply wasn't, would perish. His head is spinning and his heart is hurting, but the anger seems to just...deflate out of him. He rubs a hand over his face, exhaling. ]

Festis bei umo canavarum.

[It's not said maliciously. There's a horrible tiredness to it. He is so done with the universe right now. ]

[forcemageure]

[ Hawke sighs with far more than the required amount of drama, because he must take up for his friends' sadness by being even more bizarrely whimsical. Especially when said sadness has anything to do with him. ]

What's that about a festive cavern?

[ To be fair, he did max out Friendship with his Fenris, so it's entirely possible he never got hit with that particular phrase. He'd be doing this anyway. Stay too open for too long and things get in. Things that stick, the kind that can't be shaken out with a smile. ]

[wolfuncaged]

It means 'you will be the death of me'.

[He heaves out another sigh, rubbing his face. His mind is racing, trying to deal with the sea of grief threatening to overwhelm him. ]

...Does Varric know?

[He doesn't much care about Anders, but Varric... Varric is important.]

[forcemageure]

[ Shit. Has Hawke thought 'shit' in relation to this series of events yet? Yes? Well, it's worth repeating. ]

He doesn't.

[ ...not that he's asked, exactly, but he's got to imagine their reunion would have gone very differently. ]

Don't--please don't. [ There's a rising edge of desperation in his voice he can hear like it's coming from miles off, and hates; his better instincts had probably understood he couldn't keep this to himself forever, that it was always going to be the mouth much smarter than his mind that tripped him up, but this has spiraled so fast out of anything he could control holding onto what's left feels like the last thing he has. ]

Look what it's done here. It hasn't changed anything, it's only hurt you.

[wolfuncaged]

[He hears the desperation in Hawke's tone and it makes his heart hurt. ]

Yes, it has. But I am... [he's not glad that's not the right word to use] I needed to know the truth. Rather now, than at a later time.

[He leans back, he has some wine left from the last Waystation. He could sit here and get absolutely apoplectic.]

I will not tell him, Hawke. That is your choice, not mine.

EVERY TIME I AM REMINDED THIS IS ON THE CONDOM POST

[forcemageure]

You know Varric. He'll just make up his own version anyway.

[ It's very tired, and very gentle, and probably the closest he'll ever get to saying thank you. ]

At risk of sounding rude - [ as if that possibility has ever troubled Hawke since birth ] - are we done here? I'm finding the fact that I'm not blackout drunk a grievous oversight.

TIMING!

[wolfuncaged]

That is likely.

[Fenris exhales, but it's a grateful one. He's not good at this talking thing. At hashing out his emotions. He'd much rather run away from it all, than turn and face them. ]

I think that's a good idea. I will talk to you again.

[He wants to say so much more. He wants to tell Hawke he's sorry the world has turned out this way. He wants to tell Hawke they'll find a way to FIX this. He wants to scream at him for being so fucking stubborn that he'd get himself killed in the first place.

He says none of those things. He just stares at the screen for a moment, before turning it off.]