Title: An Uncharted Future
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: T
Length: 1,478 words
Relationship: Mild Fenris/Isabela, implied Fenris/Hawke/Anders
Content notes: No archive warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘reflect’ prompt in fan_flashworks.
Summary: Fenris isolates himself to reflect on his complicated feelings after killing Danarius. Isabela won’t let him go through it alone.

***

Fenris ignored the knocking at the front door as he had done for the last three days. They would give up eventually.

He took another swallow from the bottle.

He was midway through the remains of Danarius’s wine cellar, though it was taking longer without Hawke around to share it. It seemed a fitting way to celebrate the death of his old life.

This knocker was insistent. Fenris scowled. The banging was making his head ache.

Danarius had burned three days ago. There had been no funeral. No professional mourners. No flute players. Nothing of the pomp and grandeur that would have accompanied his passing in Tevinter. Just an anonymous place among the paupers’ cremation in Lowtown. A Chantry sister might have said some words. Fenris didn’t remember.

It was what Danarius deserved: an ignominious death in a far-flung outpost of the old Empire. But the lack of ceremony made his death feel peculiarly weightless, like Fenris couldn’t be entirely sure it had happened at all. After all, he had spent nearly ten years with Danarius haunting him. Was it really any different now?

He felt cheated. He could recall the savage joy that had filled him when he had grabbed his old Master by the throat. The warmth of the spray of blood across his hands and face when he tore it out. But it was just that, a memory. Like he was looking at it from a distance. Or like it had happened to someone else. After those initial moments, when Hawke had convinced him not to turn the violence that was pounding through his veins upon his sister, the elation had simply ebbed out of him and been replaced by… nothing.

The knocker finally stopped. Good.

He was alone.

He felt unmoored without Danarius. Even after all the years he had spent in Kirkwall, Danarius had been a lodestone, orienting Fenris’s life. Killing Danarius had been his goal for so long that Fenris had given little thought to what would come after. And now that he was dead, Fenris was adrift.

Danarius was the only one who could connect the two halves of his life – who he had been before the ritual, and who he had become afterwards. Leto, and Fenris. Fenris had killed the only person who could make him feel whole. Any hope that his sister might have helped to close the gap had vanished once her betrayal was revealed. He felt that absence like someone might feel for a missing tooth.

Fenris nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice came through the window.

“Your door seems to be stuck,” Isabela said cheerfully as she climbed over the window ledge and into the room. She looked around at the unmade bed, the pile of bottles, the cold fireplace.

“Did you climb up the side of the building?” Fenris demanded.

Isabela shrugged. “Rigging, drainpipes, they’re much the same.” She waltzed over and sat down at the table near him. “Aren’t you going to offer me some of that?”

Fenris mutely handed over the bottle – an Antivan wine, of relatively recent vintage – and Isabela took a swig.

“What are you doing here?” Fenris asked, when Isabela didn’t seem inclined to explain her sudden appearance at his window.

“Just checking on a friend,” she said. “Hadn’t seen you in a few days. Wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

“As you can see,” Fenris said. “I am fine.”

“Mmmm,” Isabela said, looking around the room in an exaggerated manner. “Probably not how I would put it. Thought you would be celebrating your newfound freedom with your friends.”

Fenris grimaced, and Isabela handed him back the bottle. He gratefully took another drink.

“Didn’t feel like celebrating,” he said after he wiped his mouth clean.

“Why not? You’re free! Your own man! Isn’t that everything you’ve been working towards for the last eight years?”

“I know,” Fenris said bitterly. “I thought I would be happy.”

Isabela nodded. “It never does feel like you think it should,” she said. Fenris passed her the bottle back, and she took a drink.

“Have you felt like this, then?” he asked, curiosity stirring.

Isabela shrugged. “I’ve had my share of vengeance,” she said. “It’s meant to wipe the slate clean, kill all the anger and pain they brought you. But it never does.”

Fenris grunted.

“It’s not enough to kill your past,” she said, putting the bottle down on the table between them. “You have to build your future.”

Fenris shook his head. “To what end?”

“There’s your problem. You need to ask yourself: What do you want out of life?”

“And when you asked yourself that, your answer was that you wanted to be a pirate captain?”

“In a way,” she said. “I just knew that I would never be caged again.” She regarded him, tilting her head to the side. “The question is: Who is Fenris, the free man?”

Fenris had never really asked himself that. He had been so focused on reclaiming who he had been, he had given little thought to who he might want to become.

Isabela was watching him with a soft look. “It takes time,” she said gently. “But... you don’t have to go through it alone. You have friends, Fenris.”

Fenris closed his eyes against a sudden, embarrassing prick of hot tears. He swallowed hard against the lump that was in his throat and found that he was unable to respond.

He felt Isabela’s hand gently come down on his own. “I’m here,” she said. The tears that had been threatening forced themselves out beneath his eyelids and trickled down his cheek.

He heard the chair opposite him shift against the floor, and then Isabela was sliding into his lap, her arms going around him as she pulled his head against her ample bosom. He turned his face against her and his tears dripped onto her dark skin as silent sobs racked him. She stroked his hair, making gentle shushing noises.

Finally, the tears stopped, and Fenris rested his head against her chest, feeling drained. He inhaled her musky aroma as his body suddenly became alive to her presence; soft, heavy, and warm. He nuzzled against her and could feel himself reacting to her weight on his lap. Isabela seemed to notice too, if her sudden hum of interest was any indication, and she wriggled against him. He lifted his head to look at her, her dark eyes enormous in the dim light of the mansion, and she closed the gap between their lips.

The kiss was intoxicating. Fenris tilted his head to deepen it, his hands going to her waist, but that’s when it suddenly felt wrong. Where Hawke was firm and muscled, Isabela was soft and yielding. Although it was appealing in its own way, the dissonance shocked him back to awareness, and Fenris broke off the kiss abruptly, turning his head away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at the floor.

“It doesn’t have to be anything more than two friends comforting each other,” Isabela whispered, gently tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear.

This could be who he was. He could choose a different path than the one he had embarked upon with Sara and Anders. A life of freedom, like Isabela had chosen. He felt the possibilities stretching out before him – no bonds to tie him down, just the temporary companionship of the road. He could remake himself anew with every city, every companion.

It had appeal. As did the beautiful woman sitting on his lap. But his heart ached for the warmth of Sara’s fire, the familiar comfort of her bed, the quiet pleasure of evenings spent in her company. Even the presence of Anders did not detract from the picture in his mind.

“I’m sorry,” Fenris said, his voice strangled. “I... can’t.”

He might not know who he was or who he was becoming. But the one thing he did know was that the future he wanted had Sara in it.

Isabela sighed. She put a finger under his chin to gently turn his head back to face her. “You love her, don’t you?” Fenris didn’t trust himself to speak, so just nodded. Isabela sighed again, then slid off his lap.

“I’m sorry,” Fenris said for a third time. “And... thank you. It... means a lot.”

“It’s fine,” said Isabela, rearranging her clothing. “No skin off my nose.” She grabbed the bottle and took another swallow, before putting it down on the table and turning to leave.

She paused before she reached the window, then turned back. “Let me know if you change your mind,” she said, but didn’t wait for a reply. She stepped out of the window, and was gone.

Fenris was alone.

He looked around Danarius’s long-abandoned mansion.

It was time to go home.