Title: An Unwelcome Proposal
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: T
Length: 1796 words
Content notes: No warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘never’ prompt in fan_flashworks.
Summary: Fenris raises the prospect of marriage. Hawke does not react well.

***

"Hawke, we need to talk about marriage," Fenris said one evening.

Anders jerked his head up from where he was working on his latest version of the manifesto. Surely he had misheard. He turned in his chair to see what was going on.

Fenris was sitting on the lounge opposite Sara, leaning forward so that his forearms were on his knees, only the balls of his feet touching the ground. His legs were bouncing with nervous energy.

Sara meanwhile, was lounging sideways in her chair, legs hanging over the armrest. She looked up from the book she had been reading, one eyebrow raised. "You're proposing?" she asked with a dry, disbelieving tone.

"No,” Fenris said with a scowl. “I'm talking about your marriage, Sara."

"Oh, my marriage," Sara said with an eyeroll, and returned to her book without further comment.

Fenris frowned at her non-reaction. "It's the one option we haven't fully explored,” he said. “Allying yourself to a powerful house could solve a lot of our problems and give you a strong base for taking on Meredith."

"The answer is no," Sara said, her voice monotone, not even bothering to glance up from her book.

"I'm serious, Hawke. It’s worth considering. You can't hope to take Meredith on without support."

"I have considered," Sara said, still not looking up. "Not going to happen."

Anders could see Fenris clench his jaw at her flippant dismissal. "You have the name," Fenris said, standing up and beginning to pace. He gestured as he spoke, a sure sign of elevated emotions. "What you need are resources and allies. Marrying the son of one of the richer families would give you the best of both worlds."

Sara did look up then. "You sound like my mother," she said and, ominously, put her book down on the floor beside the couch. Anders knew what Sara looked like when she was gearing up for a fight, so remained silent to stay out of the crossfire.

"Maybe she had a point!" Fenris snapped back.

Sara swung her feet over the edge of the couch so she could sit upright. She watched Fenris as he paced back and forth in front of the fire.

“And what do you think marriage involves?” she asked, entirely too calmly for Anders’ liking.

“It is a contract between two houses,” Fenris said, “Tying together wealth, title, and lineage.”

“Lineage, yes. And how exactly does that happen?”

At that point, Fenris seemed to realise where the conversation was headed, though far too late to do anything about it. His mouth dropped open a bit, and he seemed to struggle to say something before Sara cut him off –

“They’re going to want an heir, Fenris.” She stood up, squared her shoulders and marched over until she was standing right in front of him. She looked him in the eyes. “Do you want me to whore myself out to some noble wanker, so we can be in a better societal position?”

Anders winced.

“That’s not –” Fenris started, but was interrupted again.

“Do you want another man to get a child on me?”

Fenris’s face went through a series of contortions. Anders wondered if Sara realised the secret ambition Fenris harboured for a family. Perhaps not consciously, but, ever the rogue, she always seemed to instinctively know where to strike. “I-” Again, he attempted to say something, but Sara was on a roll.

“Would you want to watch?” she asked quietly, almost in a hiss.

Fenris’s face paled. Then he turned on his heel and left the room. From the subsequent door slam, it sounded like he’d left the estate as well.

“Shit,” Sara said. Her shoulders slumped and she ran a hand through her hair, leaving it in disarray.

Anders made the mistake of adjusting his position on the chair, which made a small creaking sound. It seemed to remind Sara of his presence. She turned on him.

“You could have said something,” she said accusingly.

Anders shook his head and raised his hands as though to fend her off. "You're more than capable of fighting your own battles," he said.

“You could have at least stopped me from saying that,” she said.

Anders shook his head again, laughing ruefully. "I don't think anything short of blood magic could stop you when you get going."

Sara walked back over to her chair and collapsed into it, hanging her head. After a moment she looked up at Anders. "Do you think I should go after him?"

"Leave him to calm down,” Anders advised. He would probably need a stiff drink or two.

Sara sighed. She picked up the book that she had dropped onto the floor and carefully closed it, smoothing out one of the pages as she did so.

"Do you think I should get married?" she asked.

"By the Maker, no," said Anders. "But you know that Fenris is only trying to look out for you. He probably didn’t think through all of the… implications."

Sara nodded, looking miserable. Anders considered telling her that she had hit a nerve with Fenris, but what would be the point? It should be self-evident from his reaction, and they didn’t have the kind of lives that would allow that kind of fantasy to come true anyway.

For a moment, he considered going after Fenris himself but decided that he didn't particularly feel like having his insides rearranged. He had probably gone to the Hanged Man, to drink away his worries with Isabela and Varric.

***

Meanwhile, Fenris was stalking the streets of Lowtown, spoiling for a fight. Sara's words were ringing in his head as he walked. And more than that, the mental image they had conjured.

He imagined Seneschal Bran’s odious son between Sara’s thighs, enthusiastically working to carry forward his lineage. The thought made Fenris’s nostrils flare and his fist tighten. He did not think of himself as jealous – did not have any right to such a feeling – but Sara had chosen him. Him, and Anders. He would not see another take his rightful place.

He had been naïve. Both about the realities of marriage and the depth of his own emotions. In Tevinter, marriage would often be on paper alone. Even the necessary act of heir-making wasn’t always carried out with the undersigned parties. Magisters cared far more about ensuring their heir had the best possible combination of lineages than they did about them being their own flesh and blood. But in Kirkwall, things were more provincial. They expected to make their own heir. The thought of another man as her husband, using her like Danarius had used him— Fenris gritted his teeth. Sara had asked if he would submit to witnessing such a thing – he could well imagine being in the role of guarding her bedchamber, forced to listen to what was taking place on the other side of the door. He would sooner drive his fist through the heart of any man who dared touch her in that way.

The ferocity of his reaction surprised Fenris. He did not feel remotely the same way about Anders. After all, they both belonged to Sara. She had chosen them, freely. But in the scenario in his head, it was the nobleman who was daring to lay claim to Sara. And Fenris could almost feel the beat of the nobleman’s heart against his hand, the warm spray of blood across his face as he ripped it from his chest.

It was at that auspicious moment that the humans stepped out from where they had been lurking behind stacked crates and barrels. Fenris looked around to realise that he had wandered into a dead end, and what appeared to be an ambush.

"Look what we have here, boys," the apparent leader of the bunch said. He was ill-shaven, with hair that was balding in the middle, and had – of course – a Fereldan accent. Because who didn’t love a good dose of irony.

"An elf who thinks he's too good to stay with the others," one of the other gang members sneered. "We'll teach you to step foot outside the Alienage."

"Can you use that sword, or did you pinch it, you filthy knife ear?" said a third.

Fenris slowly drew his greatsword from its shoulder sheath. A little exercise was exactly what he needed to burn off his excess energy. And then it would be back to the Estate, and Sara.

"Why don't you come and find out?" he said with relish.

***

Fenris returned to the Estate later that night. He glanced into the bedroom to see that Sara and Anders were already asleep before making his way down into the kitchen to draw himself a bucket of water with which to wash. Anders, it seemed, was ingraining some habits in him. Once he had cleaned off the gory remains of the gang members, he removed his armour and carried it back up the stairs to the bedroom. He laid the armour down in its customary spot for cleaning the next day and looked again at the bed. Anders was on his side, curled around Sara. Sara had an arm flung out into the space that Fenris normally occupied, as though she had been searching for him in her sleep, but there was still room enough for him to slip in, if he chose.

He hesitated. Would she welcome seeing him in the morning, or should he sleep elsewhere, maybe in the room she had set aside for him? He dithered by the bed, until Sara suddenly opened her eyes.

“Fenris?” she whispered. Brown eyes, at first glazed with sleep, focused after a moment. “Fenris,” she said, with what sounded like relief. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

Making up his mind, he slipped into the bed alongside her. Her warm arms wrapped around him.

“I should be the one apologising,” he said. “I didn’t mean-”

She leaned forward and kissed him. Fenris closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her.

“If I was going to marry anyone,” she said when she pulled away, “It would be you and Anders.”

“I know,” he said, though such a thing would never be possible. For a brief moment, the injustice of that stung him. But such was the way of the world, and there was nothing to gain by wishing for anything different.

She rested her head on his shoulder and, only a moment later, began to softly snore.

Fenris smiled to himself and laid his cheek against her hair. Then closed his eyes and waited for the morning to come.