Chapter Text
She’d once heard heartache described as a wound best healed undressed – to leave it open, untouched; to let it breathe and mend on its own, not suffocated with distractions, or drowned with drink.
But Maker, what she wouldn’t give for a distraction. Or better yet, a pint.
It’s not the broken engagement that stings the most – her pride might be a great and terrible thing, but she’s always carried her social losses with grace (and not a small amount of insufferable cheek, much to her late mother’s chagrin). No, the worst by far, Hawke thinks, is that she’d started to care. And affection for someone who’d toss you to the sharks without a second thought, now that is not a wound so easily suffered.
A whole month since the debacle, and the rumour mill keeps churning, but it’s not the whispers that get to her – it’s the seeming indifference, the unshaken calm of the man who’d treated her heart like a small, insignificant thing, as though Hawke herself was small, and irrelevant beyond being a stepping stone to a considerable fortune. Turning up at the same social event is one thing – turning up at one hosted at her own house speaks of a disrespect so vivid it’s bordering on the absurd.
She’s escaped the festivities with most of her dignity still intact, only one, albeit generous glass of wine in her belly, and her former fiance’s pilfered pocket-watch tucked away in her skirts for some nefarious plan she’s hoping the sea will help her hatch. Her family’s manse (hers now, after her mother’s passing, but she keeps forgetting between one grief and the next), lies in the cradle of a secluded cove, behind which Kirkwall sprawls. A sliver of beach curls almost all the way around the cove, and on the far side twin rows of cliffs cut sharply into the dark waves of the Waking Sea, the great jagged shapes like a hundred fins arching from the surface. And there’s a wildness to it that calls her forward now, away from the clink of glasses and muted laughter drifting out of the open windows, and she wanders along the beach until she’s out of sight of the house, dragging her skirts and her wounded heart, and only when she’s by the water’s edge does she allow herself to stop.
And to scream at the very top of her lungs the loudest, most outrageously colourful expletive she can think of.
The water doesn’t answer, nor does the sea beyond the cove, and in the resounding silence Hawke huffs a self-satisfied breath. She toys for a moment with the idea of tossing the pocket-watch into the depths – a final flourish, to top off her rather impressive vocal performance – but she decides against it when another idea presents itself in its stead.
It takes her a moment to consider the thought – another for that one glass of wine she’s allowed herself to give her the go-ahead, and then she’s stripping off her boots and stockings, fingers trembling from the slight chill making her hands fumble on the laces of her dress, before she’s discarded it on the beach along with the watch (and her inhibitions and good sense, clearly). And then she’s running for the water with a whoop of delight that’s cut off rather abruptly by the shock of cold that hits her, and wraps around her like an iron vice.
If anyone sees, they’ll say she’s gone mad – broken heart and broken mind, and she’s used to making public spectacle of herself, isn’t she? – but it’s hard to remember the party and the stares and her hand wrapped around the stem of her glass, imagining his throat bobbing with that insufferable laughter. A few quick strokes take her away from the beach, until all she can see is water on all sides and the dark sky above – like she’s floating, suspended in a void, dark and cold but honest, at least, in its unforgiving nature. Unlike some, she thinks, but the thought is a very small droplet, quickly swallowed by a bigger pool of indifference, and it’s a strangely liberating thing, being bared like this – just Hawke, and the water.
Something brushes against her bare leg, a deceptively delicate caress. It takes her a moment – a millisecond, to register the pain.
“Fu–”
The rest of the oath is drowned by a mouthful of water, and she’s flailing, lungs screaming as panic clamps around her windpipe, and now she really can’t tell sky from sea, or even the bottom of the cove from the surface – can barely think past the agony that’s gripped her leg, like fire under water, and a pressure so great it’s hard to force her thoughts past it, to the actions needed to keep her afloat.
A hand on her elbow then, strong fingers digging into her skin, hauling her up (is it up? or down?), and the last thing she sees before the dark water and unconsciousness swallows her whole is a tiger’s pattern of iridescent stripes, like the moon glinting off the surface of a rippling pond, burning against her retina a bright and brilliant ghost of blue, blue, blue –
She comes to feeling like she’s had a physical brawl, the pressure on her chest making her lungs hurt, but when she tries to draw breath it comes, sharp and cutting, and the shock is great enough to make her retch – as though coughing up phantom sea-water, but there’s nothing, even as she dry-heaves and flounders against the sand at her back.
Sand – beach. She’d gone to the beach. She’d gone to the beach and screamed at the sea, and then–
And then nothing, and in Hawke’s experience, that usually has a rather simple explanation.
“So much for not drinking,” she groans to the dawn-lit sky, rubbing a hand across her eyes as she curls in on herself. There’s sand – Maker, it’s everywhere, and her braid feels thick and grainy with it, her red ribbon a pathetic, clinging weight against her neck. Oh, I’m going to kill Isabela.
“Indeed. I imagine you would have swallowed half the water in the cove, had I not saved you,” a voice answers then, somewhere to her right.
It takes a moment before the response registers – a pleasant, rolling baritone that washes across her skin, leaving a peppering of goosebumps.
And reminding her, rather effectively, that she’s not wearing a single stitch of clothing.
It’s a single second before she’s scrambling for something to cover herself with, because her pride might be clad in iron, but she’s far from invulnerable, and her reputation has taken enough hits this year alone to scar her for a lifetime, and the very last thing she needs is for some passing vagrant to accuse her of indecency just because she happened to pass out on the beach–
“If you are looking for your – coverings,” her companion says, halting curiously over the last word, and – coverings? Hawke thinks, suddenly distracted by the odd word choice – “You will find them on the other side.”
Several things become very clear to Hawke – the first being the suddenly inescapable fact that she’s on the far side of the cove from the manse and the beach where she’d left her things, and the second – and far more pressing issue, really – is that her companion is not a man at all.
In fact – human doesn’t even seem applicable, to whatever he is.
“What,” Hawke manages eloquently, voice a hoarse, air-starved rasp and eyes blinking as she takes in the sight of him – if it even is a him, perched on the rocks jutting out of the water half a pace from where she’s sprawled, naked in the sand. But he doesn’t seem to make much note of her nakedness – if anything, his assessment seems more curious than lewd, as though observing a foreign creature out of its natural habitat.
Of course, Hawke reasons, strangely detached, he has fins. What’s a naked woman to a man with fins?
The creature lifts a single brow, an elegant arch above glass-green eyes, and it’s a feat in itself just deciding what to focus on. The fins – well, of course they’re rather hard to ignore, and it’s hard to look away once she’s really started looking. A long, mottled grey tail, with sharp angles like a shark’s, tapering down to a wicked tip, touching the water’s edge as though he’s ready to dive in should the need arise. But above it, a keenly human shape – a lean torso and strong shoulders, like any other man’s, climbing to a sharp jaw and a startlingly handsome face, Hawke thinks, for a creature who is half fish.
And those eyes – like the bottles in her father’s old study, brought all the way from Antiva and filled with the rum she’d spent her sixteenth nameday getting acquainted with. Never again, she’d thought then, and is tempted to make the same vow again, because this has to be a liquor-induced dream. And a very vivid one, too, because she’s not waking up, even with this awareness, and he still hasn’t taken his eyes off her where he sits, quietly observing, as though Hawke is the wild creature arisen from the depths. His hair, still-damp quicksilver bleeding to moon-pale as the sun dries it, is pulled back and gathered at the nape of his neck, like the current fashion – a bizarrely normal detail, juxtaposed against the markings on his skin, the sharp lines cutting and curving around his torso, all the way down that strange tail-fin (she remembers thinking they were blue, but they appear almost white now, not lit by the moon but the soft morning sun).
But – he, she thinks, strangely determined. Let’s go with that, to start.
“You were drowning,” he explains then, in that deep, lovely voice, as though answering a question, except Hawke is fairly sure all she’s done is gape. “It was quicker to bring you here, than to take you back.”
It takes her a moment to understand that he’s talking about her clothes – and why she’s on this side of the cove.
“Oh.”
He tilts his head. “Your kind take great care in covering yourselves,” he observes, eyes gleaming, as though he’s still trying to figure out why that might be. “But you shed yours with little concern.” He offers a brief glance to Hawke’s bare shape, more by way of emphasis than any attempt at ogling.
If she pretends that she isn’t blushing, perhaps it will make it true, although Hawke doubts it, feeling heat creep across her throat and cheeks. And she’s not shy by any means, but it’s distinctly unnerving to find yourself the object of someone’s thorough study, without so much as your underthings.
Well. It all depends on the situation, really, but this is hardly her bedroom, and he is hardly her lover.
That thought certainly doesn’t help, and she briefly entertains the idea of burying herself in the sand, but since he doesn’t appear to find her lack of dress at all disturbing, it’s probably best to just go with it.
It sounds distinctly like something Isabela would advise, although that isn’t necessarily reassuring, Hawke laments.
“You seem rather well acquainted with my – kind,” she says then, clearing her throat. Her gaze keeps jumping back to his tail, and – she can’t really point fingers, she realises, as she’s not doing a good job of keeping her eyes to herself. “And may I ask what yours is? Kind, that is.”
She’s heard the stories, of course – sailor’s tales from the Waking Sea, and the Amaranthine Ocean, of water sprites and selkies and other creatures of the deep; of helping hands to push a drowning man to the surface, or to pull him down to the darkest depths. Clearly, she’s encountered the former, friendlier sort, unless he’s planning to drag her down after sating his obvious curiosity. It’s a chilling thought, but it’s hard to feel threatened with the way he’s looking at her – intensely, but not with any visible ill intent.
And – she’s the one asking the questions, Hawke realises.
“We live below,” the creature says at length. “As your kind lives above.”
“How – poetic.”
His mouth quirks, bemusement flickering across his face, and the thought strikes her to ask if he knows what poetry is, but she swallows the urge. Perhaps she might use it to barter – information in exchange for her life, if he really is planning on drowning her later.
Except that Hawke doesn’t really know much poetry. An impressive number of bawdy sea shanties and several highly embellished anecdotes, but it’s a rather poor repertoire of entertainment, now that she thinks about it. Hardly material to charm her way out of a situation like the one she currently finds herself in.
“I watched you,” the creature says then, dragging her back to the sand on her bare ass and the scrutiny of those bright green eyes, and Hawke is almost tempted to say there’s humour glinting in them now. “You screamed at the water, and then threw yourself in. Were you hoping to challenge it to a duel?”
If this were a sailor’s tale, there’d probably be a lesson here somewhere, Hawke muses, on how to go about conversing with fae creatures – diplomatic answers, the ‘sate your curiosity and then kindly let me go, fell thing’ sort of response that all the chaste princesses of the great stories offer their beastly adversaries. Well, according to Varric, anyhow. But she’s never been one for shying away from confrontation, least of all by way of diplomacy, and something about his curiosity – not the too-bright, eager sort one might expect from a child, but a calm, almost reserved thing, as though he’s knowingly holding himself back – stirs at some rebellious part of her heart that loves to provoke.
She squares her shoulders – and tries not to think about the fact that she’s still very much naked, and that the gesture all but flaunts it. And that the morning chill make some things rather…perky. “And if I was?”
Curiously, he seems pleased by the answer. “Then I would suggest starting with a smaller opponent,” he drawls, and there’s no mistaking that humour now. “A pond, perhaps.”
Her bark of laughter startles Hawke more than it does him, but she’s loath to pull it back when his look softens into a smile at the sound. “Oh, if you knew me, you’d know I always go for the biggest opponent available. It’s more fun that way.”
He seems intrigued by that tidbit. “A minnow swimming with sharks,” he says, giving a flick of his tail for emphasis, and Hawke wonders if she should take it as a threat or not. But the smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth takes some of the edge off the gesture, turning it strangely playful.
The silence that pools in the wake of his remark is distinctly awkward, at least on Hawke’s end, and since she can’t scramble for her clothes, words will have to do.
“So,” she says, grasping for anything to fill the quiet, because if she lets it settle it’s all too easy to remember the fact that she’s still missing her clothes. And that she’s somehow found herself the object of interest of a potentially dangerous creature that could very easily, and probably very violently, drown her. “I should probably thank you, as I clearly haven’t drowned.” Yet, she thinks, but finds the word sounds – teasing, and that’s probably not the way she wants to handle this. A human man might be susceptible to her charms, but whatever he is–
“You are welcome,” he says, as a human might, but – no, the tail is still there, Hawke finds, momentarily distracted by his manners, and missing the way his expression shifts as he asks, “Are you hurting?”
She blinks, but a glance at her leg jogs her memory enough to make her visibly wince. The vicious red marks wrapped around her ankle makes it look like someone’s administered a lashing – which, remembering her brilliant idea of going for an evening swim alone, is probably a fitting testament to her own foolishness.
Lifting her gaze from her leg, it’s to find concern in his expression – muted, but there still. He’s careful, she thinks, and makes a point not to glance towards his tail, still inches away from the water, as though ready to bolt. He’s not giving her everything – not the full force of his curiosity, or his worry, as though she might exploit them somehow. Although Hawke can’t for the life of her imagine what she could possibly do to put him at her mercy in her current state.
“No, it’s – well, it stings a bit, but I’ve had worse.” Against her wishes a memory crawls in, of the previous night – the stifling warmth and the press of people, a throat bobbing with laughter, and her battered heart like the cliffs sitting pretty at the mercy of the sea.
Perhaps I’ll put a jellyfish in his bath, she thinks, and feels a little better.
“The pain will pass,” he says then, pulling her back from her vengeful musings, only to find that his expression has darkened. “Take heart from that small mercy. Some wounds never fully heal.”
The way he says it suggest a keen familiarity with that kind of pain, but a glance at him reveals no more scars than Hawke herself sports – a few thin lines criss-crossing the length of his tail, but the pretty blue-white markings are the most eye-catching thing about him, aside from the obvious.
A breeze sighs in across the shore, and she shivers, arms lifting to wrap around her chest reflexively. It’s a small comfort, although it doesn’t do much to either warm her or hide anything, but then Hawke has all but given up on the latter.
“You are uncomfortable?”
He’s still watching her, and Hawke tries her best not to fidget. “A little chilly is all,” she says, and pointedly refuses to look down at herself. She tries for a disarming smile. “Of course, that’s to be expected, given that I’m stark naked.”
Had he been any other man – or a man, Hawke suspects this would have been an apt moment for him to take advantage of the situation. But he doesn’t drop his gaze from hers, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s a form of courtesy or if he simply doesn’t find her form compelling enough to study longer than a first, cursory glance, but it’s a relief all the same. A small kindness when he owes her nothing, least of all her life.
But he did save her life, Hawke reminds herself. And he’d kept watch while she slept, although for any other reason than simple curiosity, it’s impossible to tell. But even if that were all, it’s more than some of her own kind might have offered, confronted with a naked, half-drowned woman on the beach.
A thought strikes her then – or an impulse, rather, and she’s voicing it before she’s given herself time to second-guess the wisdom of doing so.
“What’s your name?”
He looks surprised – taken aback, almost, and for a moment she wonders if she’s committed some sort of social faux pas. It’s gone a moment later, although Hawke doesn’t think she’d imagined it, and then his features shift, a shadow passing over his expression, as though she’s touched upon a delicate subject.
But – “Fenris,” he offers at length, tongue wrapping around the syllables with enough care to make a shiver climb up her spine, but despite the lovely enunciation, something about the way he says it makes her pause.
Not his given name, she decides. Or – given by someone, perhaps, but not his, not truly, and she so desperately wants to pry now, to ask what sort of place it is he comes from, below, but the look on his face keeps the questions firmly glued to the roof of her mouth.
Instead she reaches out a hand, and, “Hawke,” she says. Not her given name either, but then her family name has always suited her better. Marian was hispreference, and Marian was the girl who ran into the sea. Hawke – Hawke was the one who challenged it to a fight.
And promptly lost, she thinks wryly, although the thought lacks any real sense of defeat.
She realises he’s looking at her outstretched hand, as though unsure of what to make of it, but before she can pull it back he’s touched his fingertips to her palm, before turning it over, as though to consider her fingers.
“You have creatures by that name,” Fenris says then, lifting his eyes to the sky, a pale stretch of cloudless blue, before bringing them back to Hawke’s.
Her smile is suddenly a very silly thing, and she’s sorely tempted to ask where he’s gotten that information from. “A comparison I’ve heard far too often,” she sighs, but then, “They are birds of prey – the sharks of the sky, I suppose you might call them.”
Something glitters in his eyes and – oh, he likes that comparison, she realises, and her heart does a sudden, startling leap in her chest.
He lets go of her hand then, but gently, as though giving it back – as though holding out their hands for another’s inspection is a common human activity, and one he’s successfully participated in. And if she hadn’t been quite as distracted by her earlier reaction, Hawke might have found it endearing – perhaps even taken it upon herself to explain the concept of shaking hands.
Fenris looks out across the water then, and before she’s had the time to register the action he’s moved, a leap so sudden and so quick all she sees is the gleam of white before he’s disappeared under the water, and she catches the tip of his tail-fin before it too vanishes beneath the surface, leaving a ripple in its wake.
She’s pushed to her feet without realising, a startled noise pulling from her throat, as though to stop him, but before she’s managed a full step he’s pushed back up through the surface, far enough away from the shore to keep afloat, but not enough that she can’t hear him when he says,
“Come. I will take you across.”
There’s a glib retort at the tip of her tongue, that she can swim the distance herself, thank you very much, but then she remembers her spectacularly pathetic performance the night before, and promptly swallows the words.
And – it’s courting danger, Hawke muses, and a hundred different stories come back to her now, of fools putting their trust in fae and cunning folk promising safe passage over various crossings, bodies of water being the most treacherous of all. But even as she considers the old tales and the wary warnings that accompany them, she’s walking into the surf, the sun on her bare shoulders and an almost wild defiance in her step.
She’s waist deep when he holds out his hand – like a nobleman asking for a dance, and she wonders suddenly if this, too, is something he’s observed and learned – and she watches the droplets gathered in the dip of his palm, glittering crystals lit by the sun. There are no markings there, and instead she watches, fascinated, the natural lines running across his calloused skin.
“If you try to drown me, I’m warning you now, I’ll put up one hell of a fight,” she says, even as she curls her fingers around his – like any man’s hand, large and strong, the only real difference being the slight webbing visible between his fingers.
“I believe you,” Fenris says, with that dry, warmly tinged humour, still carefully contained, and Hawke is suddenly, desperately, tempted to see just how much is needed to make him laugh in truth.
She’s about to ask him, only half-joking, if he’s planning on holding her hand for the swim across the water, but before she’s had the chance to form the words on her tongue he’s given her a sharp tug, and her yelp of surprise is as earnest as the oath that follows as he drags her down into the depths. And it’s purely instinct – and perhaps a smidgen of raw, utter panic – that allows her to grab hold and cling for dear life as he dives, cleaving through the water like a blade cutting through silk, meeting no resistance, and–
And it’s exhilarating, and fast, so incredibly fast – like flying must feel like, she thinks, but underwater, and she would have laughed if it weren’t for the fact that she’d likely drown doing it.
She keeps her eyes open, stubbornly and despite the sting, but it’s all a blur of greens and blues and underwater shadows, and she isn’t given the chance to properly take it all in before they’re breaking through the surface, and she’s breathing again, sucking in air more by way of surprise than any actual need.
They’ve covered the whole length of the cove, Hawke realises with some surprise. It would have taken her a small age to cross the same distance with her own strength, a thought that should have rankled, but all she can manage is a gentle, breathless sort of awe. A flicker of something accompanies it – a sudden remembrance of those blue-green depths, and cutting through the water without a hindrance, a weightless elation expanding in her chest, filling it with warmth. And suddenly she can’t stop thinking of the glimpse she’d gotten, blurred and over before she’d had time to fully process it, but–
“Fenris,” she says, still slightly out of breath and his name still a new taste on her tongue – new, but not at all unpleasant. “When you said your kind lives ‘below’, did you mean at the bottom of the cove?” She finds it hard to believe that they’ve never been spotted before, or that the cove is deep enough to hide a world full of creatures like him. But if it is –
Take me there, she wants to say, the urge a sudden, barely contained need, but she clamps down on the impulse before it can get the better of her. Are you asking him to drown you now?
Fenris is quiet a moment, considering her where she treading water beside him, and Hawke recognises his expression, a keenly human one on his almost-human face – as though he’s weighing his options, and whether or not telling her the truth is in his best interest.
“There is a tunnel,” he says then, angling his head towards the water, and the slip of sea visible between the nearly touching cliffs. “It leads to the sea.” He shrugs, another strangely human gesture, and Hawke wonders if it’s something he’s picked up from watching them, or if it’s a cross-species thing. “I come here sometimes, when I am able,” he adds, carefully, as though divulging a true secret, and something about the way he says it resonates within her.
“It sounds like you’re running,” she says, before she can stop herself.
He blinks. “Running?”
“Oh,” she says. “Uh – swimming. Away from something.”
Recognition pulls at his features, his frown a lovely, severe thing, and Hawke is momentarily distracted by the sight.
Then he says, with controlled care, “Yes. Something like that.” A beat, and then, almost under his breath, “But I do not have the freedom to hide forever.”
And there’s history there – years of it, written in every line of his face and the depths of those unnatural eyes, and human or not, it’s so very clearly not the sort of thing you can just pry into. Not without offering something in return, and Hawke has very little of worth to offer, aside from a damaged reputation and a growing pile of personal losses.
But she considers their situations – whatever awaits him beyond the sanctuary of the cove, and the life that lies at her back, the one she’s shaped for herself, for better or for worse.
“Then I suppose that makes two of us,” she says, quietly.
He considers her, and she can tell he’s no doubt thinking about her actions the night before – screaming bloody murder and then throwing herself head-first into the cold embrace of the water. “You were – running?” he asks, tongue wrapping around the last word with some uncertainty, but his voice was made for speaking foreign words, Hawke thinks.
“In a manner of speaking,” she says – then laughs, a short and breathless thing. “I tried swimming away from my troubles, and look where that got me.” And she allows herself to taste her next words only briefly, before daring to speak them. “Well. I can’t say I’m entirely unhappy about it.”
He looks at her then, an entirely different sort of assessment now than before, gaze cutting to the heart of her, as though she’s finally given him an opening, a hidden pathway to uncharted waters, and – and there’s something there, in those bottle-green eyes, something that makes heat drop into the pit of her stomach. And he doesn’t have to be human for her to recognise the weight behind that look, and the implication that sits in the depth of his gaze.
Her mouth feels dry, and she’s only absentmindedly treading water now, keenly aware of how close they are, and the fact that she is still very much, very painfully without a single article of clothing. But for once, Hawke finds herself unable to give a fine damn.
He’s close enough to touch – so close that she could, if she only lifted her hand, touch her fingers to his hair, clinging to his brow and neck and coloured pewter by the water. There are lines of silver-blue curving around his chin, and working their way in a fishbone pattern down his throat before fanning out, only to be distorted by the water. And she only realises what she’s done when her palm brushes against his chest, the movement as instinctual as the one keeping her afloat, and she’s one startled breath away from pulling her hand back when she feels the shudder that runs through him at her touch.
Hawke swallows thickly. “You’re not that different,” she hears herself say then, watching the ripple of water push against his skin, startlingly dark against her hand. “From this angle,” she adds, lifting her eyes to meet his. If she doesn’t look down, it’s almost easy to believe he’s not, even as she takes in the unnatural brightness of his eyes, and the sharp, elfin curve of his ears.
“You are,” Fenris says, tone a low, almost reverent murmur, and the brief flash of yearning sketching across his face makes Hawke wonder if last night wasn’t the first time he laid eyes on her. But it doesn’t really matter, because he’s looking at her as though he’s really seeing her – for all she is, large as life, full of old scars and still-healing wounds but a marvel, regardless.
And no one, human or otherwise, has ever looked at her quite like that.
He’s dipping his hand into her hair then, fingers snagging in her loose braid, but it’s a small discomfort quickly forgotten with the anticipation that sits, almost at the bottom of her throat, and when he tilts her head she yields, eyes fluttering closed –
“Hawke!”
The call from the shore makes her eyes shoot open, and dragging her gaze away from Fenris and to Isabela in the distance, sauntering down the footpath towards the water. And when she looks back, he’s gone, not even so much as a tremor on the surface to signal his departure, and for one staggering moment Hawke wonders if she’d imagined it all.
She’s still treading water when Isabela stops at the beach, one hand on her hip and the other shielding her eyes from the sun that’s climbed high in the sky.
“Fancied a swim, did you?” she laughs, nudging the toe of her boot against the pile of discarded clothes by her feet. “A bit bold, this early in the morning. Families take walks here, you know.”
Brought back to herself fully, Hawke has managed to cover the final distance towards the shore, and when she stumbles out of the surf with a sudden, inexplicable gracelessness, limbs loose and ankle stinging like all hell, Isabela is threading her shift over her head, water seeping through the thin cotton almost immediately, but the rest of her dress follows suit before she’s had time to look properly indecent.
“There you are,” Isabela says, quick fingers lacing up the back of the dress, as Hawke tries in vain to gather herself. “Public indecency is more my scene – Varric’s, if he’s got enough drink in him and not a mind to pull his shirt closed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that you’re loosening up your laces a bit, but there is such a thing as the right place.”
Hawke is staring at the boot in her hand, finding it very hard to dredge up her usual wit to respond. There’s an urge to glance behind her, towards the water – to see if there’s a shiver on the surface, a flash of silver-white, or if that, too will just be her imagination.
“We missed you at the party,” Isabela says then, copper eyes glinting curiously as she casts a searching glance to the water behind Hawke. “Had an interesting night out here?”
“I don’t remember most of it, to be honest,” Hawke says, carefully. “I passed out on the beach.” Which is close enough to the truth to pass her lips smoothly.
But Isabela’s grin is a quick, keenly knowing thing. “Didn’t think you’d had that much to drink – I only saw you have the one glass, and you were sipping at it all evening.”
Despite herself, Hawke smiles. “Oh, I drank a bit more than that.” Or tried to, anyhow. And perhaps she had had more to drink than she remembers, or her imagination is truly something, to have conjured her strange sea-creature, with all his half-human quirks and complexities.
Broken heart and broken mind, she thinks, something in her chest clenching at the thought – not grief for her heart-wound, but for the fact that she’d conjured him to help her feel better and he had, only to vanish like a wraith, as much a figment of her imagination as the affections of the man she’d once been set to marry. That’s an old loss now, but she finds with some surprise that the new one sits with equal weight in her chest, for all that it’s an imaginary hurt.
A hand in her hair then, and Hawke starts –
“Lost your ribbon at cards with Davy Jones?” Isabela asks, giving one dark lock an inquisitive tug. “Your mother’s kerchief, wasn’t it? You’re usually so careful with that.”
Startled, she touches her fingers to her hair – to the half-unravelled braid, thick with sand and saltwater, and the ribbon that had been there only moments before; she’d felt it against her neck, heavy with water, but now all that meets her searching touch is her hair, wet and dripping and curling around her fingers.
And – she remembers suddenly, vividly, his fingers tangling in her braid, the curl of them against the back of her neck–
She’s grinning, Hawke realises, by the bemused expression that crosses Isabela’s face, before it gives way to a grin of her own, and – “My regards,” she purrs, “To whatever sea-nymph stole away with your ribbon and left you looking like they did you a favour.” A wistful sigh, and then, “It’s been ages since the sea tossed me anything worth stripping buck naked for.”
Then she’s turning, and – catching sight of something on the ground, fishes up the silver chain with the pocket-watch from where it lies, half-buried in the sand. “Oooh, this is a pretty thing.” Turning it over, she blinks, and upon catching sight of the engraved insignia, tosses a knowing look at Hawke. “Oh, Hawke. A petty thief now, as well? I’ve been a bad influence on you.”
“Your regret would be more convincing if you actually sounded regretful,” Hawke counters, wringing water from her hair. But the words are curved around a smile, and there’s a tremble in her hands – relief, she finds, the feeling both new and startling in its honesty, and the tightness in her chest unfurls enough to let her breathe.
Isabela shrugs, and when Hawke starts towards the footpath, falls into step beside her. She gives the silver chain an idle swing, the heavy watch catching the gleam of the sun, burning a white mark against Hawke’s retina for a single instant. “You know I make it a point not to have regrets,” Isabela says, and, “Speaking of”, she adds, giving the pocket-watch a rattle for emphasis. “What’s your plan for this little trinket? You could buy a boat with this kind of silver. Not a very big boat, mind you, but a pretty sloop shouldn’t be hard to wrangle.”
She’s about to say the words – pawn it, melt it down, I don’t care – when she takes a moment to consider it, the gleam of silver in the sun, swinging from Isabela’s fingers. And she thinks of a sloop and the open sea – of waves against the prow, cutting across the surface, a shadow above the world waiting far below – the one he’d given her a glimpse into, as brief as his presence in her life.
“Feel like going fishing?” Isabela asks, grinning, and when she holds out the pocket-watch Hawke curls her fingers around it, the silver cool against her palm. Her mind flashes to Fenris again, his many near-human gestures, and the look in his eyes – as though he’d never seen something quite like her, but not because of her lack of fins.
“Something like that,” she muses, smile flashing quick and bright, and for the briefest of moments her grief feels miles away.
They pause at the top of the rise, Isabela a few paces ahead of her as Hawke turns towards the cove, allowing her eyes to roam across the water towards the Waking Sea stretching beyond the cliffs, searching for a gleam of red amidst the blue.
“You know, they say there are things in the deep that’ll pluck your heart right from your chest,” Isabela muses. “They’ll pilfer it like a pretty jewel – even wear it like one.”
“What a cheerful image.”
“Isn’t it?”
Hawke’s smile softens, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the water. “Any stories of hearts given willingly?”
“Oh, hundreds. What did you think the whole sailor business was really about? We’ve all given our hearts, one way or another.”
“Even broken ones?”
Isabela laughs. “Oh, love,” she sighs, slinging an arm around Hawke’s shoulders, her warm skin and dry shirt a welcome embrace, and Hawke feels a little better, and the weight in her chest a little lighter, as Isabela croons,
“Those hearts make for the very best stories.”