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It isn’t supposed to be like this, Fenris thinks.
The realization strikes him quick and cold. It’s struck him many times over his years as a free man in Kirkwall, but he’s pushed it away, bled it out in battle and lived to the next day.
Now, there’s no avoiding it.
“I’m happy for you, Kitten.” Isabela whispers behind him, followed by the gentle sounds of her mouth against Merrill’s. It’s a private moment, shared between two people who believe him asleep. “After everything… You deserve to feel happy.”
Merrill laughs, the sound high like winter bells and soft like lambs wool. "Now that I'm finally free… Now that I know there was anything to be free from to begin with-" Breathless. Awed. "I feel like a weight has been lifted. Like I can live the way I was meant to."
Weepy as she's ever sounded, Isabela repeats, "I'm so happy for you." Then, "And it will only get better from here."
Insomnia haunts Fenris, most of all because he is made to witness moments like these. Moments that tell him how broken he truly is.
It isn't supposed to be like this, he thinks. It's supposed to be like with Merrill and Isabela and Anders - he's supposed to be free. The hurts are supposed to go away with time.
He's so tired, but he can't close his eyes. Sometimes he thinks the only reason he hasn't killed himself is because Danarius hasn't told him he could.
The morning comes slowly, but by the time the sun is shining, the dull, numbing ache has already spread like a Blight throughout his entire being.
-
As soon as he enters the Clinic, he's met with Anders’ angry scoff, the remnants of the nasty fight they'd had before Fenris left just a few nights before. “Crawling back to the abomination, are we?”
Normally his pride would smart at that and he’d hiss back at Anders and leave as quick as he came. If he were lucky, Anders would follow him and they’d row again until they were tired of being upset and ready to be understanding. Maybe they’d lie together or walk side-by-side to the Hanged Man. They may even kiss right there in the street, if they were sorry and wounded enough.
Today, the numbness consumes him too completely for even his familiar (comforting) anger to poke through. He quietly closes the door, careful of the splintering around the handle, and turns to face his lover instead.
Anders is cleaning bed sheets in his washbin - or he was doing so, before Fenris entered. He stands beside the small metal tub with his hands on his waist, looking stern. When his eyes meet Fenris’, any quarrel is forgotten, leaving something fearful in its place.
“Oh,” he breathes. Anders rushes forward and wraps his arms around Fenris, heedless of his spiked armor. “I’m sorry, love, forget it. I'll be angry at you later. What do you need?” He pulls away just enough to look down. “Did something happen? Is it Hawke?”
That gives Fenris pause. Taking a moment to lean his head against Anders’ chest, Fenris says, “No,” but it barely leaves him. All the strength has been leached out of him, any manner of joy or hope or will to continue forward taken from him by the shock of his earlier realization. It's a shock he feels constantly, a realization he lives with every moment, but it's heavier now than he can remember it ever being.
“Alright, love. Do you want to have a lie down?”
Fenris would like that very much. The walk from to Anders’ clinic is never a very long one, but it seems to have been all he could take. Anders leads him patiently through his clinic to the threadbare cot he keeps hidden in the back and at the sight of it, Fenris almost wants to laugh.
How rare for them to lie here, he thinks. After all his years of sleeping on palettes and mats on the floor, Fenris struggles to find comfort lying on the thin bedding here, even nestled against his lover. Anders certainly doesn't complain when Fenris drags him into his big cushy bed in Hightown, though, so he's never taken the time to explain why. Probably never will.
Now, Fenris can't bring it in himself to care - about any of it. About sharing, about the floor, about the bad dream he never woke up from. He just wants to be horizontal. He wants to be small so the world will become smaller too. He wants, for one moment, to forget.
Like waking at a sudden thunder, Anders' voice brings him to the present, and he realizes he's lying down, face tucked into Anders' chest.
"Hey," Anders is whispering into his hair. "My handsome man. Do you want to talk about it?"
Not particularly. But Anders is the type that talks (and talks and talks-), so Fenris forces his lips to move. "What is it in me," Anders' shirt is still damp from the laundry, cold where it sticks to his face. "That makes me like this?"
Anders holds him tighter. "What do you mean?"
"Was the Chant correct? Was I meant to be a slave?"
A quake takes Anders, shakes him through as he jolts up to his elbows. Fenris slides off and his head hits the pillow. "What?! What the Void is Sebastian telling you now?"
As if Sebastian would be caught dead reading the Black Chant. "In Tevinter… The Chantry says that elves were powerful, but foolish. So the Maker created Man in hopes that His creation could tame us - tame them. Elves were to serve Man until the end of time. It was… hard-wired into us." Only now does Fenris realize he is trembling. "Am I- Is that why I can find no peace?"
"No," Nothing more than a whisper that Fenris can scarcely hear. That's how it feels sometimes, too; a 'no' that couldn't shake a leaf, let alone the foundations of his known life.
"Merrill is finding peace. I want to be happy for her. I want to be happy for you, here, taking your freedom and handing it out bit by bit to the people who come to this place of healing. But I can't feel anything. It just hurts."
His eyes focus, suddenly, and zero in on Anders. The man's face is touched by sudden tears. "Fenris, no…"
"Why am I different?"
"We're all different. Our hurts are different." But Fenris thinks Anders seems confused, too. "Merrill, she was abused under her Keeper, kept isolated and then used a scapegoat by a demon. That's a much different hurt than you or I have known. And she is a very different girl."
Fenris says nothing. The ache is back, less numb than before, and it feels like a terrible rush of … something. Like a building scream. It rises in his chest and makes his eyes squeeze shut.
As if to convince himself that Fenris is well, his lover begins an onslaught of kisses, peppering them over the entirety of Fenris' face, even over the lyrium curls on his chin and the three circles through his forehead. When his lips touch them, a migraine begins to build, but the pay is worth it. Anders' touch is worth it.
"I don't want to be a slave," Fenris says. "But sometimes I miss being a slave."
Anders huffs, the exhale a man makes when he stumbles upon a corpse. "I think I understand. But that is a terrifying thing to hear."
Fenris curls closer again and finally that numbness - that wall between himself and the world around him - crumbles. He begins to cry. "It's terrifying to feel, too, Anders."
"Shh, love, it's alright. I'm here. It'll pass soon."
"It never does." Sebastian says that confession makes a man's chest feel lighter. He's wrong.
Anders doesn't say anything to that. There isn't much one can say to something like that, Fenris imagines, but in the morning Anders will tell him he is broken and that he should leave. That he should go back to Danarius. That he should die.
It's what Fenris tells himself, anyways, and he fancies himself an intelligent man. Anders is intelligent too.
For now, Anders smooths his hands over Fenris' hair, over his skin. Only when Anders presses his lips warmly over the flesh between neck and shoulder does Fenris realize his armor has been removed.
Everything feels big and loud and strange and far away.
Fenris falls asleep.
-
When he wakes, it's to the smell of burning eggs.
"Oh- shit " Anders is cursing, somewhere out of Fenris' sight. When Fenris opens his eyes, Anders is still at a distance. "Of course, I finally manage to find an egg and I can't even-" The angry huff that follows is as familiar as a starry sky or a family portrait. It's weightless, free of any real upset, but Anders does so love to grouse.
Though his head is aching, Fenris stands. He wishes, wryly, that he could blame this on a hangover - or better yet, that he was drunk.
He pads silently to where Anders is fussing over bacon now, the burnt eggs in a sad brown pile on a sad brown plate on a sad brown table. The sight makes him smile, but it confuses him too. Anders never makes breakfast, says it reminds him too much of kitchen duty at the Circle.
"I thought you preferred a big lunch."
Anders shoots up like he's been burned, and for a startling moment, Fenris worries he has been. "Oh, Andraste's sweet hairy triangle-! You can't just-"
"But I have."
Cheeks flushed red and hair a mess, Anders looks twice as endearing as usual - which, to Fenris, is nearly too much to bear. He glances away, grateful when Anders turns back to his cooking.
Anders sniffs the bacon and frowns. "I can't tell if it's through. How do you tell when bacon is through?"
"When the cook hands it to me."
"Har har." Anders huffs. "And to answer the question you so rudely startled me to ask- I'm not cooking this breakfast for me. It's for you."
Fenris glances at the eggs again. "Delicious."
"Jackass."
"What I mean is, it's a sweet gesture. But you needn't spoil me. Unless…"
The thoughts of last night return. Perhaps Anders is going to tell him to leave and never come back. To go to Tevinter, like the Chant demands. Is this his way of coping with his guilt? Serving breakfast?
"Unless nothing. Can't a man cook breakfast for the lover who cried on him all night long?"
"...All night?" Couldn't be. He remembers falling into dreams.
"Even in your sleep… Breaks the heart." All the sound in the room is the spatula on the skillet, the fat and oil bubbling around it, the fire crackling beneath it. Then, "You seem to be doing better now, though."
"Not particularly."
Anders turns to him again. His face is unshaven, eyes tired and haunted. Worried. "Is it true then? You always feel this way?"
For a moment, Fenris considers lying. The moment passes quickly, pointlessly. "Yes, it's true."
Those brown eyes stare up at him. Anders looks so small beneath him, kneeling there on the dirty floor beside the fire. Not for the first time, Fenris is struck by the terrible need to protect this person.
More time passes. Anders plates the bacon, which is also burnt, and Fenris smiles at it. When he takes a bite, despite the outside being thick and blackened, the inside is nearly raw. It shouldn't be a happy thing, but something in Fenris lights for one small, important moment. Like a match gone out in gentle rain.
"I love you," Fenris says.
"I love you. And I want to help you."
"I know you do." He gestures to the sad meal before him. "That's why you did this awful thing here."
"It can't be that bad. You're just mean."
He can't help but notice that his lover doesn't try a bite to test his claim. Fenris smiles, but doesn't laugh, even though he feels like he should. "I love you," he says again. It feels like an apology.
"I love you too."
Fenris does not finish his bacon, but he puts the eggs away. He's eaten worse - and he is grateful. His friends do these things sometimes, toss him coin and give him gifts, as if it's easy. Like breathing, eating, shitting, and being kind to Fenris are the hallmarks of life.
"What do we do now?" Anders sits next to him, so close that there's hardly a part of them that isn't touching. "How can I help you cope with this? How can I carry this weight?"
"I was rather hoping you would know. You are the healer, after all."
"My funny man." But he doesn't laugh. "Just time then. Like a broken arm or a lingering cold. Rest and love and time."
"...Will that work?" He meets his eyes, finds them warm and hopeful. Searching. Asking him to stay.
"I suppose we'll find out together."
"Yes. I suppose we will."