Log: Fenris and Hawke WHO: Fenris and Hawke WHEN: Immediately upon return from Storybrooke WHERE: Medical WHAT: Fenris goes looking for Hawke, Hawke goes looking for Fenris, and they find each other. WARNINGS: Discussion of possible future murder
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Hawke nearly knocked a bunch of people over to get to the hospital. It was nice to see all of them, but… no, get out of the way.
When Hawke found Fenris, they nearly crashed into each other, and instead of stopping Hawke just picked him up in a tight bear hug. “Maker, you have got to stop disappearing on me. We’re even.” He was disheveled, tired, and shaggy, but more than anything he seemed angrier. Angry at their separation, maybe, or angry that he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. It meant that the way he touched Fenris was possessive and solid, reluctant to put him back on his feet, let alone let him go.
Fenris wasn’t always fond of being touched, but at the moment having Hawke hold him was all he wanted in the world. Fenris’s mind was muddled with memories that seemed real and not all at the same time, he had been magically transported and turned into someone who was not himself (and yet was), and he was furious about all of it. The only thing that seemed like it could make him feel the least bit better was this, having Hawke’s arms around him and Hawke looking and smelling exactly like he was supposed to.
“I did not do it intentionally, I swear to you,” Fenris fiercely replied. He wanted that clear immediately. “Some kind of magic, I do not know what, but--” But if he ever found out who was responsible, they would be lucky to escape his sword. In the meantime, he threw his arms around Hawke’s neck and clung tightly to him.
“This place went all to hell with you gone. Goblins broke down the damn walls. Goblins.” It reminded him of the Deep Roads, and Hawke hated the Deep Roads.
He had to put Fenris down eventually, and when he did, he immediately took his hand and started leading him to a more private area of the hospital. “I don’t want to pile things onto you, but this place isn’t safe yet, and I need to tell you before I tell anyone else. And you need to promise not to hit me until I’m finished explaining.”
Fenris followed, and he was still holding Hawke’s hand, but that was really not an encouraging introduction to whatever came next. The last time Hawke had begun a conversation like that, it had been to confess that he’d been working blood magic. He’d managed to talk Fenris around to accepting the situation, but it hadn’t been easy. What the Void could he have done that was an escalation from that?
“If you are about to tell me that you are the one who wiped everyone’s minds with magic, Hawke, I am going to do much worse than hit you,” Fenris growled.
“What? No.” Hawke hesitated. “Wait, what happened?” If he’d just been awake in the bar, he probably would have heard an explanation of this entire mess, but he’d been pretty unconscious. Oops. “Where did you go, Fenris?”
“All of us were transported to a town called Storybrooke,” Fenris said, and it was clear from the tight set of his jaw and the faint snarl in his voice that he was angry about it. “We had no memory of our true selves. They were replaced with other memories of lives we did not live, relationships with people we did not know. I was changed into a human, the lyrium under my skin was gone, I was married to someone else, and I had no idea that any of it was wrong until an hour before we were brought back here.”
Suddenly anything Hawke had to say felt so much less important. His expression dropped from confusion into rage while Fenris spoke, his fists clenching and a warmth pressing in his hands, threatening to turn into fire.
“And we don’t know who did this?” he asked, his teeth grinding.
“Not yet,” Fenris replied. He fully intended to find out. When he did, keeping him from killing them on the spot was going to require immense effort.
“That kind of power should not be possible.” Fenris shook his head. He had never seen anything like this, even in Minrathous. “But it is, and to use it to hurt so many is evil. This cannot be allowed to stand, and it cannot happen again.”
“I would not envy anyone in the room when Rogers and the Inquisitor find out who’s responsible.” And they would be lucky if Hawke was nowhere to be seen. People here didn’t realize that Hawke was not, in his heart, a doctor first. His work in the hospital felt like penance at times, and at others it felt like keeping the positive parts of Anders alive and fed his desire to be useful, but it was not, necessarily, in his nature to be gentle.
Especially not once Fenris’s safety was involved.
“When any of us find out who was responsible,” Fenris agreed. People’s entire selves had been erased. Everything that mattered to them had been taken away. The people who remained at Mount Weather had lost friends and lovers and family, thinking they would never return. The mountain had been attacked, and faced a foe with only half its strength. Whoever had done this had done a massive wrong to literally their entire community.
“Hawke, I--” Fenris hesitated, then forced himself to get the words out. Hawke needed to know. “I...while I was gone, I was with someone else. I did not remember you, or our life--I remembered nothing at all of my life. In that place, I believed I was married to Stacker Pentecost, and that I had been for many years, and I...behaved as I would with someone to whom I was married.”
If he was jealous, it was covered with his indignation that this had happened to Fenris at all. Control of his own life and his own destiny had been something he’d seen Fenris struggle with since day one, and the idea that someone could just pull him out of the life he’d chosen for himself and put him down in another entirely did nothing more than make Hawke want to punch someone.
With fire.
“Please tell me you aren’t apologizing. There’s not a thing you’ve done wrong, Fenris.”
“No, I know.” Fenris knew that none of this had been his choice, that a person could not be held responsible for what they had done under the influence of magic like that. Even so, it felt bad and wrong and Fenris didn’t know how to process it. If Hawke knew, then Hawke would help. He had been good at that, over the years. “I thought I should tell you. It was not my own doing, but it happened, and I do not know yet how it will affect me.”
“Whatever happens, we’ll work through it, just like everything else.” Hawke took in a long, deep breath, willing his magic to calm. Fenris needed his support, not his anger.
“While we’re confessing things,” he continued, reaching for Fenris’s hand again but pausing before he made actual contact, waiting for Fenris to close the gap based on his own comfort, “I need to tell you something before I do anything else about it.”
Fenris took a firm grip on his fiance’s hand even as he began to worry what a confession would mean this time. He needed the reassurance that Hawke was real, even if Hawke was about to hurt or infuriate him again. “Go on.”
“Without the other people from his world here, Lucifer started making trouble. He was roping people into helping him find a prison they’d been building for him with Adaar’s help. It was a matter of time before he learned about the Fade and realized I was the only mage left with access, and he would have killed me if I hadn’t found a way to convince him not to.” Anticipating Fenris’s reaction, he quickly added, “I’m not possessed and I didn’t make any magical deals. I’ve been healing the body he’s in. He’s sharing it with other one, Castiel; they’re fighting like wild animals in there, but Cas is the only thing keeping him from killing everyone. I’ve been trying to help him until I could find something more… permanent.”
The way he said it, permanent clearly meant killing both of the angels, whether one of them was nice or not. Hawke still couldn’t see them as anything but troublesome spirits, even if he’d gotten along all right with Cas before.
“I have to find one of the Winchesters and tell them to deal with their shit. I didn’t want you to find out afterward.”
The explanation was in some ways not nearly so horrible as Fenris had expected. Not possessed, didn’t make any magical deals...this certainly could have been much, much worse. Healing a possessed body to keep the demons from destroying the mountain? That barely qualified as a need for confession. Fenris would have simply killed the three of them and let the Maker sort the good from bad, but Hawke had done the best he could under the circumstances, and now push had come to shove.
Fenris brought his hand to Hawke’s face and took a brief, hard kiss. It was the quickest way he knew to say ‘it’s all right, all is forgiven, I love you, I’m not angry, thank you for telling the truth’ and he was saving words for the most pressing concern. “Then let us find a Winchester.”