Title: Beholden
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: G
Length: 392 words
Content notes: No warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘Preparation’ challenge in fan_flashworks and ‘Worst case scenario’ for genprompt_bingo.
Summary: Fenris hesitates to ask Hawke for help. Her willingness to do so creates its own forms of debt.

He had rehearsed every possible outcome in his mind, and he still wasn’t sure whether her agreement would be the best-case scenario, or the worst.

He hated to put himself into another’s debt. But the truth that he had forced himself to face was: he needs the help.

Hadriana was always a formidable mage, and she would not have come alone. She would have brought a full complement of Tevinter hunters, and a temper tested to its limit by being obliged to follow him to the backwater reaches of the old Imperium.

To take her down, he needed help. And Hawke, with her twin swords and an instinct for targeting mages, was exactly who he needed.

It’s that which terrified him.

Since the Deep Roads, they had found a kind of equilibrium. His debt to her had been discharged, and she always paid him an equal share of whatever job she had for him. It was an arrangement that had been working well.

But now – now he was about to tip the balance in a manner that he could not repay.

“Please, help me to fight Hadriana,” he had said over and over again to the Hawke in his mind.

Sometimes, Hawke would shake her head and turn away, saying, “I don’t owe you anything, Fenris.”

Other times, she would instantly agree. “Of course I will help, Fenris.”

He isn’t sure which is worse.

If he offered to pay her, she would take it as an insult. If he promised a future favour, she would only laugh.

No, if she agreed, it would be solely because she wanted to help him. Therein lay the problem.

He had considered just asking Isabela. If she agreed, she would make it easier on him by extracting some kind of future promise or favour. But she didn’t have Hawke’s killer instinct for mages, and he hesitated over what that future promise would entail.

It would also hurt Hawke. She wouldn’t say anything, but after all their conversations together, it would be strange not to turn to her for help. And it would, he realised, in some way close-off whatever was growing between them.

So he had to ask. All this prevaricating did not change that conclusion. Yet still he hesitated outside the door to the Amell Estate, before raising a fist to knock at her door.