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A fog had rolled in over Lowtown, making Anders' shirt stick to his chest uncomfortably. He was a fool for coming back this late from the Hanged Man, but after a while the dull roar of people carousing to forget their problems became incredibly irritating. He had waved off the offers of his friends, and told them he was more than equipped to deal with any trouble he could come across.
But it seemed like trouble had come across him, because ahead he heard a faint sound, out of place in the silence this late at night.
A whimper--so quiet, it was almost lost in the creaking of disintegrating wooden shacks and the distant crash of the waves that was the constant background murmur in Kirkwall's poorer areas.
What in the Maker's name? he thought. He had his staff, he reminded himself. He was a stronger mage than anyone he knew, with the exception of Merrill. Merrill who was operating with an unfair advantage.
There--next to an alley, there were booted feet sticking out. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so threatening. Anders skirted them widely, and turned to face the alley head on.
His eyes picked out five bodies, all in the uncomfortable twisted slump of the dead. In the light of the wisp he summoned, it looked like three of them had their throats torn out, by the look of the blood down their fronts. Two must have had wounds he couldn't see.
The whimper came again, and he picked out a large shape huddled behind the bodies. The sound was too high for a man that big and Anders frowned. If it was a trap, it was an inexpert one.
The shape moved, and Anders felt, for a brief moment the instinctive horror of being alone at night and faced with something that was recognizably not human.
Throwing caution to the wind, he called his spell wisp and urged it forward, into the alley, revealing--
A corpse, and hunched over it, a mabari.
Anders' breath left him in a whoosh, and he turned to leave. Just a dog, although why it is hunched over a body he was able to imagine in gruesome detail. It was not the worst thing he'd seen in Kirkwall.
The dog whimpered again, then yapped, a strange sound for such a big dog. Anders stopped, and sighed. His conscience was prodding him—and more urgently, his purse was prodding him, being totally empty after the last set of purchases for the clinic. He turned. It would be worthwhile to loot the bodies, and the least he could do to see if there was anyone still clinging to life.
All were dead, in their pockets the usual few coins and cheap charms meant to keep them from harm—Anders had never put much faith in them. But he suffered Hawke to drape one around his neck once in a while. It helped if they were shiny and expensive. But the ones he unearthed from the dead men's pockets were dull and near worthless--Anders knew he could get a copper for each of them. Maybe.
Then he moved towards the mabari, who had silently watched him go through the pockets of the three dead men. Anders raised the spell wisp higher.
“Ugh,” he said, despite himself. The mabari had a nasty bleeding gash across its face, and one eye gone--gouged out, and recently by the look of it. Its maw was covered in blood, and instead of looking vicious, it raised its enormous white-rimmed eye to him. It was shivering fitfully, and when it made eye contact with him it pawed at the corpse in front of him, whining pitifully. When Anders knelt to have a look, the dog whimpered once more and went quiet.
It was a man—Fereldan, by the look of him—and he was not long dead, the cause being a lucky dagger to the heart, quick and fatal. Anders could set the scene well enough—a mugging. The man's armor looked fresh and new, and his boots were unmended and clean. He had practically painted a target on herself. It payed to look ragged in Lowtown.
Despite the mabari and the man obviously putting up a good fight, two against five was still two against five. Anders dropped the man's still warm wrist and shook his head at the mabari.
He felt a little stupid, treating the dog like a person, but according to Hawke and the many, many Fereldens of his acquaintance, they were as good as.
Anders didn't like dogs. He'd never had one as a child, and later in the Tower, after he'd learned to read and learned to escape into books, the heroes in some of the shabbier literature he'd read always had a faithful mabari. Said mabaris usually liked nothing better than biting out the throats of whatever mad apostates or sniveling magisters they came across. So, Anders didn't like mabaris much either.
Anders kept his distance from Hawke's Hugh, although the mountain of a dog usally looked at Anders like he was part of the furniture. Bethany had noticed Anders studied avoidance of the dog, and had taken him aside to assure him that the mabari liked some mages just fine. It was an embarrassing truth, but the fact that Hawke's mabari was a cardsharp did as much to not endear him to Anders.
Anders wasn't going to risk attempting to go through the doomed Ferelden's pockets, so he rose to go. At his movement, the dog looked at him, and its head whipped towards his owner, a movement so human it made Anders wince.
"He‘s gone," Anders whispered, still feeling a bit foolish. He thought about apologizing, but turned to go instead.
The keening wail behind him almost made him jump out of his skin.
The dog had flung itself to the ground, and was nosing frantically at the neck of its former owner. It looked half-maddened, and as Anders watched in horror, it lifted its muzzle and wailed again.
"Stop, stop, shut up!" Anders hisses. The dog couldn't hear him in its grief, and Anders cast about himself--how soon would the sound attract Lowtowners, or even worse, the guard?
"Hey," he said sharply. "Hey!" He punctuated this by tapping his staff on the ground, releasing a slight burst of arcane energy. The mabari looked up.
"Come on," he muttered, an ear cocked for the sound of footfalls.
It was foolish, but as he lead the tottering dog onto the lift into Darktown, he thought back to a dark night in the Chantry, and the eyes of strangers upon him that he'd recruited for help with his fool's errand. Those eyes had kept him from cracking, from crying out his grief.
Perhaps that is why he had let Justice express himself for him. Anders felt his mouth quirk in an unfeeling smile.
No Darktowners were out in the fetid night, so Anders and the dog arrived at the clinic without any interruptions.
The mabari's eye was really, truly distressing to look at. That's the reason that Anders gave himself for setting out a basin and a clean needle.
"This is going to hurt like the fires of the Void," he warns the mabari, who had curled up on a pile of sackcloth in the corner. "Want me to knock you out?"
The mabari closed its remaining eye, looking for all intents and purposes like it wished Anders would just put it out of its misery permanently. Anders took it as a yes.
Two hours later, Anders was done. The mabari seemed to resist much healing magic, he noted, and it roused easily, even though Anders did his best with the weak sleep spell he had developed just for this purpose.
Now the mabari had a long scar across its face, and Anders had wrapped a bandage around the pit of its eye, to protect the tender skin there.
Tomorrow he would ask Hawke if the man was interested in taking in another mabari.
As it happened, Anders did not see Hawke for a week. One thing after another kept coming up at the clinic, and there was no leaving Darktown.
Anders did not think it was possible, but getting the mabari made him even more popular amongst the Darktowners. He supposed it made sense--most of them were Ferelden, after all.
Almost all the visitors to the clinic, if they were not bedridden or dying, made a beeline for the mabari--to pat it or to speak to it in revolting baby talk. One hobbling man had seen fit to tell Anders that his new roommate was female.
Frankly, Anders didn't see the appeal in dog ownership. The mabari was morose and barely moved from her pile of sackcloth in the corner. After peddling the slim pickings from the muggers, he had enough coin to buy food. On the plentiful advice from the Darktowners--all they had to offer, he supposed--he tried different combinations of food to tempt her to eat. She refused the first few times, but did after Anders, operating under the theory that she could understand him, scolded her for not eating food that some of the Darktowners would be grateful to have, goading her into occasionally eating the oat porridge, cooked eggs and boiled tubers that he made.
Having the poor beast to take care of offered a little variety to his grey Darktown days, at least, and Anders often found himself eating his share of porridge in front of the mabari while crosslegged on the floor in front of the piled sheets that had become her bed.
"It's good, for a certain value of good," he said. "Eat,“ He slid the metal bowl closer to the mabari's nose with the toe of his booted foot.
The mabari sighed and flipped over away from him. She was remarkably silent. Anders had feared she was going to be slobbery and emotively barking all the time, but other than the gut-churning wails of the night he'd found her, the dog was silent. She would just sigh and whimper occasionally in her sleep.
Anders, in a fit of whimsy, had fashioned a red patch to cover the reddened pit of her lost eye, and after he had eaten he fastened it over her head and one ear, with a button he had found between the bricks of a Hightown street.
"Don't shake that off, now," he caution the mabari. ”The area will be sensitive to light for a while."
The mabari didn't answer.
"You look plenty nice enough to meet Hawke tomorrow," Anders said, leaning his chin on one hand. "I'm out of coin, and he's probably got some errand on I can help on. As enlightening as its been having you around, I think you'll like living in Hawke's mansion a sight better.“
For the first time, the mabari raised her head. Were all mabaris so expressive? Anders would swear that it was giving him a worried look.
"You'll have all the nug ham and druffalo steak you want," Anders rambled. He had, in the last few days, gotten strangely fond of the enormous silent creature. "And I don't know how you measure these things, but you'll have a possibly-handsome boy mabari to keep you company. I can't tell."
Did the mabari just flick its eye in exasperation? Anders couldn't tell, but the near disdain was fairly adorable. Impulsively, he reached out a hand to stroke its head. The mabari's skull was square, its fur short and shiny, and Anders marveled at the softness of its short nubbin ears. The mabari leaned its head on his head, a warm heavy weight.
"I bet fresh air and sunshine will have you--barking up a storm, and chasing your tail, and whatever dog things dogs do," he said inanely.
"We can't have you off to Hawke without a name," he continued, stroking its neck, bunched with muscle. "He'll name you Meg or Prudence or something awful. I don't know what your name was before but we'll come up with something you like.”
To Anders' pleasure, the name that got a whuf of assent was Tabby. "Between us, you'll always be Lady Tabitha, not to worry," he said, and went to bed magnanimously. Tomorrow the dog would go to Hawke.
The morning came much sooner than Anders expected--he was roused at some indeterminate hour by a crash and tooth-rattling barking.
He tumbled out of bed, cursing himself for stripping down to his long under-robe--he'd feel much better facing whoever it was in his leggings at least--and grabbed his staff.
He flung open the door, ready to release lightning. When he saw who it was, he sighed and dispelled the static that had gathered in the air in front of him with a flap of his hand.
Hawke was pressed flat against the door frame, and Tabby was inches away from him, hackles high and growling.
Disregarding his bare feet and the dirt floor of his clinic for a moment, Anders crossed over and put a restraining hand on Tabby's back.
"That's just Hawke," he told the mabari. "Who has a bad habit of picking locks into people's clinics late at night."
Beyond his open clinic door, he could see Fenris. The elf had drawn his sword, but at seeing Anders, scowled and put it away.
Tabby looked back at Anders, then seemed to relax. Hawke reached out a hand to pat the dog, but she growled at him.
"Where did you get an enormous mabari warhound, Anders? And for all your talk about being a cat person!" Hawke said, deftly moving his hand away from Tabby's teeth.
“I was going to give her to you, Hawke," Anders sighed, leaning his staff against the wall. He quickly outlined how he had come across the mabari, who just whined softly when he came to end of his story.
"Oh, I don't think she'll come with me, now," Hawke said. The mabari was eyeing him flatly. "I scared her, you see. She must have thought I was coming after you."
"Hawke, nobody can get to me here in Darktown, I've told you this," Anders complained. "I'm as safe as I'm likely to ever be. Are you sure Hugh doesn't want a girlfriend?"
Both of them watched as Tabby moved away from Hawke to sniff suspiciously at Fenris. Good. Anders hoped the elf would awaken in Tabby a as-yet-unseen yearning for biting.
"Er, well, no chance of that now," Hawke said, as the elf cautiously extended a hand. " She's gonna be wary of me breaking in here for--a good long time. Possibly forever."
"What?" Anders demanded, tearing his eyes away from the elf who was about to have his fingers bitten. "That's ridiculous."
"Oh, wow," Hawke said，Anders looked back at the mabari, and nearly swore. The dog had not only allowed Fenris to pet her, but for the first time since Anders had met the mabari, her stub tail was wagging. It was a small movement, but as Anders watched Fenris say something soft and inaudible to the dog, he felt a brief moment of jealousy.
"Now, Fenris with a mabari, there's an idea," Hawke said. Anders pinched the bridge of his nose. He had an irrational desire to deny it, but the elf was responsible enough, he supposed.
Then the elf looked up, and the mabari did as well. Tabby walked over to Anders and leaned heavily on his bare legs, her eyes cautiously pleased.
"That's it, then?" Anders murmured, but he supposed if he was going to pass the mabari off to Hawke, Fenris wasn't too big of a leap.
"You've only had two minutes in his company," he decided. "We'll go on some jaunts with Hawke and see if you still like him then."
"Maker, is she your mabari or your maiden daughter?" Hawke joked, and was glared at by two and a half pairs of eyes.
"What happened to your leg, mage?" Fenris said abruptly. Anders suddenly remembered his pantsless state--and the knotted scar tissue around his left knee.
"That's none of your damn business, Fenris," he said nastily. "Now I'll put some clothes on and we can go on whatever fool's errand Hawke came to wake me up for."
"No wonder the mabari wants to live with Fenris, you can be terribly mean sometimes Anders," Hawke laughed. He aimed a swat that no intention of landing on Anders' behind, which the mage slapped away with a scowl. "Go put on your pants, Fenris will soon not be able to control himself."
"Hawke," the elf said, a world of reproof in his voice.
The depressing thing was that the mabari and Fenris meshed together, Anders noted sourly a few days later. Tabby was an absolute terror in a fight, and her bulk made it easy for her to pin down whatever bad element they were fighting and for Fenris to dart up to dispatch them.
Tabby had also taken to sitting next to Fenris at every opportunity, while shooting Anders little guilty looks he tried not to notice out of politeness. The elf, though Anders was loath to admit it, seemed to do everything right--soft words and stern commands usually had the mabari leaping away to do his bidding, nubbin tail wagging all the while.
It was after a long day at the Coast, when all of them were parting ways when Anders knelt next to Tabby. Her eye had healed nicely, but the flap of red cloth that covered her eye she seemed to like, and Anders had to admit it gave her a rakish look totally at odds with her sturdy personality.
"Tab," he said softly, and the mabari looked at him. Anders felt his throat go strangely tight, and he resisted rubbing a hand across his eyes before nodding at Fenris. The elf was already heading back towards Hightown.
"Go on now," he said roughly，nodding towards the elf's back. "Go on.“
Tabby looked at him, and whined sadly. Even so, she turned and trotted towards the elf.
Anders turned back towards Darktown so that he wouldn't have to watch them go.
"Your mabari and that scary elf keep hanging out near the lift," one of the Darkwtowners told Anders as he bandaged up his child's scratched arm.
"Huh," said Anders intelligently. "Doing what?‘
“I dunno," the man said. "We've all seen 'em the last few days though. They stop, the elf has to pull the old girl away, and off they go."
"Strange," Anders said. "Too tight?" he asked the little girl, and when she shook her head he tied the ends of the bandage into a small butterfly bow.
It had been too good to be true, for things to be so quiet. Anders thought fondly back onto scratched arms and stomach bugs when chokedamp gripped Darktown once again.
It was hard not to go completely numb, Anders thought, as another weeping family carried a wrapped body from his clinic. His clinic, which was completely destroyed, every nearly every cot covered in the filth of human suffering. There was no way he could keep going tonight.
He staggered out and doused the lantern，then lumbered back inside, feeling each and every one of his years, and perhaps a few more besides.
The light from his closing door caught on the six empty lyrium bottles lined up upon his desk. Hawke would joke at this one fastidious habit, and Anders was loath to tell him that it was left over from the Circle, where lyrium consumption was monitored suspiciously, requiring every mage to return the bottles at the end of each day and account for every one. He considered sweeping them onto the floor in a fit of pique, but shook his head--they could be exchanged for a few coins.
Six bottles of lyrium would be a death sentence for any other mage, but Anders had carefully tested his limits, and discovered that not only had his tolerance improved as a Grey Warden, but with Justice as well--
Anders was hard to kill.
Not to say that it was comfortable--Anders' stomach was tight as a drum, and there was a burning both behind his eyes and in this throat. It was going to take a day or two to recover, and Anders was almost ashamed to admit that he was glad that being nearly totally incapacitated would offer him some respite from the driving will to work, to do something, to fix the world's problems.
He had fallen into a dreamless doze in his bed, when he heard a familiar clatter and familiar voices. His limbs felt heavy, but he still found the strength to turn his head into his pillow and groan with exasperation.
The door to his little room opened, and all of a sudden, there was a snuffling wet nose in his ear, which he tried to bat off.
"Anders?" a voice said from the doorway, and Anders had just enough time to open his eyes to see Hawke before Tabby erupted with yelping next to his ear.
"Anders, are you all right?" he heard above the cacophany. It was all Anders could do to roll onto his back and stare sufferingly at the ceiling as Hawke came into the room and tried to soothe Tabby. The mabari snapped at him.
"Fenris," Hawke called out, "Come get her, she's acting strangely." Indeed, the mabari was scrabbling at Anders' cot with her paws and making distressed whimpers and yelps.
Fenris and Merrill also pushed their way into Anders' tiny closet, and Anders threw and arm over his eyes and groaned.
"Tabby," he heard Fenris say, and peered under his arm as Fenris brought the mabari to heel.
"I've never seen her act like this," Fenris said, one hand on the head of the miserable looking dog. "What is wrong with Anders, that she should act so?"
A hand gripped the arm Anders was holding to his face, and Hawke was soon treated to the full force of the glare that Anders could muster.
"Maker, Anders, your eyes are bright red," Hawke said. "And you're all sweaty."
"Anders, how much lyrium did you drink?" Merrill said from beyond Hawke's shoulder. "Are all those bottles on your desk--"
"I saw them coming in," Hawke said. "Is six bottles bad, Merrill?"
Anders was surprised to hear both Merrill and Fenris exclaim aloud.
"He'd be dead if he drank six, Hawke," Merrill said, voice quavering.
"Or dying," Fenris said, also apperaing in Anders' line of sight. The mabari gave a hoarse groan, then fell silent again.
"I'm not dying," Anders said, and was treated to two pairs of green elven eyes looking at him reproachfully.
"I once saw someone force fed lyrium until they died, and I assure you, it was less than six bottles," Fenris said, making Merrill gasp in horror.
"Tevinter sounds awful when you describe it," Anders groaned, his head falling to one side. He sucked in a breath when a gauntleted hand slid under his cheek and forced his face back up.
"I don't remember if they were all today," Anders said peevishly. The palm of Fenris' hand was uncovered by his gauntelet, and it felt feverishly hot against his face. "I'll be fine."
"Should we make him throw up?" Merrill said. "There are some herbs here that-"
"Andraste's ass, would you all go away?" Anders demanded.
"I think he will not die," Fenris said, not letting go of his face. "But he is very sick. If he were incoherent then we would have cause to worry."
Fenris slid his hand away and crouched down to eye level with Anders.
"What happened that you would do this?" Curse him, the elf sounded genuinely curious.
"Chokedamp outbreak," Anders said, a bit taken aback. But the elf just nodded and rose.
Then, Anders slipped in and out of a doze, even as there was a bustle of activity around him.
He head someone putting his kettle over the hearth, and a few minutes later decisive hands were coaxing him to drink hot water with herbs in it. After another indeterminate period of time, long hands were raking through his sweaty, probably disgusting hair, combing it to lay flat on his pillow to the tune of girlish humming. There was the thunk of his laundry basin being unearthed, and soft cursing as Hawke stubbed his toe dragging it out to the main room.
Anders fell into a deeper sleep eventually, and woke up when it was twilight. His stomach had eased, and though he still felt less than ideal, it was at least bearable.
His room was empty, though--except for a figure that moved when he did.
Tabby raised her head off her paws as he sat up. On seeing him, Anders was surprised to see her stub of a tail wag, and a deep "boof" instead of a bark had him laughing, if weakly.
"You're awake," a deep voice said from his doorway.
Anders turned, and saw Fenris. The elf was framed in the doorway, and behind him, Anders could see the sheets from the cots hanging on strings across the room, freshly washed. The light from the fire had a strange effect on them, reflecting it off Fenris' armor, making him seem even more otherwordly.
"You're here," Anders said stupidly. The elf just looked at him, then nodded at Tabby.
"She would not leave your side," Fenris informed him.
"Sorry," Anders said reflexively. He went to lay down again. The room was spinning, and the ache behind his eyes made him long to sleep.
"Fenris, if you keep hanging around near the lift, people are going to take notice," he said drowsily.
"The mabari wanted to see you," Fenris said after a moment, sounding a little hesitant.
Tabby gave another "boof" in response, and Anders smiled, already half asleep.
Once Anders had recovered, things with Fenris rapidly turned sour.
The presence of the elf was something Anders looked for now, and when the elf did not accompany them, he felt a faint bitterness, that wold grow into outright fury--was the elf avoiding him? Had he embarrassed himself to the extent that Fenris couldn't even bear to be near him?
Their arguments turned, if possible, even more biting, leaving him fuming and Fenris looking at him with something like hatred. Hawke and Isabela had both started rolling their eyes when they got going, and at one point their argument had gotten so heated that neither of them noticed when the other two had snuck away back to Kirkwall, leaving them shouting on Sundermount.
Then one day Fenris showed up at his clinic, fairly being towed in by Tabby. The elf seemed--nearly hesitant, as if unsure of his welcome. Anders was so surprised to see him that he didn't control his tongue, and it was little over an hour later that Fenris was storming out of the clinic. Tabby followed, with one reproachful look at Anders.
Anders had a difficult time working on his manifesto in this state, and spent too much time staring at a blank page. One he even wrote an apology to Fenris--detailing how sick at heart it made him to hear Fenris support dragging mages back to the Tower. How Anders felt that if he could not convince those closest to him of the rightness of his cause, then wasn't convincing the world hopeless as well?
Maker, what was wrong with him? His emotions felt all over the place.
His reverie was interrupted by several smart knocks on his door, which he opened to Isabela.
"Hey, we could use some--" Isabela's fingers wiggled suggestively.
"What happened?" Anders asked, turning to fill a pouch with lyrium and elfroot potion.
"A bunch of Tal-Vashoth," Isabela said lightly, turning on her heel.
"And Hawke didn't ask me along?" Anders said equally lightly, trying not to sound hurt.
"Honestly, Anders? You've been so snippy lately with a certain elf of our acquaintance that Hawke's been choosing to take one or the other of you," Isabela rejoined, as they strode towards Hightown. Her voice wasn't judgmental, but her statement of the facts was somehow even worse to hear than an accusation.
Once arriving in the white-marbeled streets of Hightown, Anders frowned as Isabela began heading towards the Chantry.
"Hawke's mansion is the other way," he said, pointing.
"We're headed to Fenris's," Isabela said, after a moment.
Something like a cold fist squeezed around Anders' heart, and soon it was he who was setting the pace. When they arrived, Anders made to go in, but Isabela blocked his way with one arm.
"Maybe just give me the potions, and I'll send Hawke out," Isabela said.
Anders stared at her for a moment, before alighting on her meaning.
"It's Fenris who's been hurt, aren't I right?" he protested. "Isabela, let me by."
"Hawke's not the only one tired of hearing you two fight," Isabela said. "Honestly, Anders? I'm getting a little sick of you picking a fight with him."
"He does it just as much," Anders said, a sick feeling in his gut.
"I don't think he does," Isabela said, an edge of frost to her voice now. "Frankly, Anders, I don't think I like you calling him a dog and whatnot."
Anders in his agitation, drew his hands through his hair, then took and released a deep breath. Isabela watched him, her hand stretched out inexorably.
"Isabela," he said after a moment, hating that his tone had become pleading. "I promise you, I won't say anything. I swear. Just let me in, all right?"
After a beat, Isabela nodded and stepped aside. At the same time, there was a whine and scratching from the other side of the door, and Anders went inside. Tabby was there, and looked up at Anders disconsolately.
"It will be ok," Anders told her softly--the poor mabari had already been through so much. He resolved to fix up Fenris to the best of his abilities--to put the mabari's mind at ease, of course.
Fenris and Hawke were up in Fenris' room. Hawke was pacing restlessly, and Fenris was a still figure on the bed.
"Hey," Anders said softly, on seeing them, mindful of Isabela's eyes on him.
Hawke had a few shallow slices on his arms and sides, easily mended. Fenris, on the other hand, had caught a mace to the rib cage, and was breathing shallowly, obviously in pain. His intelligent green eyes followed Anders' every movement. Anders felt the same well of emotion that he had spent so much energy trying to suppress earlier. As he healed, he gently spread the fingers of both hands on Fenris' lower chest. Perhaps he spent too long searching for any imperfections in his work, as when he raised his head, Fenris was looking at him, some unnamable emotion on his face.
"Please be more careful," Anders rasped, then coughed to clear his throat. As he did, he felt a press of movement against his side, and looked to see Tabby leaning heavily against him, eyes crinkled in seeming relief.
"You've got a mabari to take care of, after all," Anders added with a chuckle. He felt better than he had in days, somehow, with Fenris whole and healthy in front of him. Something had cleared the oppressive air of his emotions. On a whim, he cast a light rejuvenation spell, and felt under his hands as Fenris breathed in deeply.
"Thank you, Anders," the elf said in his deep voice, and Anders could feel that too, reverberating through his fingers. Anders felt the strangest sensation, of something close to joy, and it was with a slight reluctance that he took his hands away, and watched Fenris sit up.
It was with a lighter heart that Anders returned to his work in Darktown. It was late one night, and Anders had just doused the lantern. He was stripped down to his shirtsleeves and leggings, taking a rare moment of rest.
Instead of waiting for Hawke to bring him along on his errands, he had just resolved to seek the man out the next day and ask to be taken along--perhaps with Fenris. It was strange that the idea brought him a flutter of excitement instead of fury, and Anders filed the thought away for another day.
There was then a brisk rapping at his clinic door, and Anders shook his head and rose to his feet. But before he could reach his door, a glowing hand slid through the wood and unerringly unhitched the latch.
Anders was caught somewhere between annoyance and awe as Fenris stepped through his door. The elf's movement stuttered as he caught sight of Anders, and the flicker of uncertainty on his face dissolved Anders' irritation.
"Impatient much," Anders said lightly. "You could have been the best sneak thief in the world with that."
Fenris rolled his eyes, and was about to respond when Tabby muscled past him. Anders was taken aback at how gleeful the mabari looked, all wagging hindquarters and little hops. Anders watched in bemusement for a moment, then heard a squeaking cry. His head whipped back towards Fenris in shock.
The elf's face reddened and his hands went to the pouches on his belt. Anders belatedly noticed that his hands were free of his clawed gauntlets. It became apparent why, as Fenris produced two tiny kittens.
Anders felt a surge of knee-weakening affection, and he knew his hands had begun to shake as he wordlessly held them out. The elf seemed incredibly amused as Anders scooped up the two tiny bundles from him. One was black and white, and the other orange and striped, and both blinked their wide blue eyes at him and mewed with impunity.
"Fenris, they're perfect," he said, and winced to hear his voice crack. "Their mother?" he asked.
"No sign," Fenris said. "Tabby found them."
"I could kiss you, Fenris, you have no idea," Anders said in a rush, laughing as the black and white kitten painstakingly clawed up his shoulder to perch there and rumble in his ear. He knew he must be red and teary from excitement and happiness, but when he stole a look at Fenris, his heart leapt to see the elf smiling slightly.
"Perhaps I wouldn't be adverse to such thanks," the elf said, after a moment.
Anders, whose had been thinking along the same lines ever since the elf had thanked him with such dignity in his mansion, obliged, stepping forward into Fenris' space.
His arms full with mewing kittens, Anders gazed down into Fenris' depthless green eyes, and into his joy came a pang of regret for all the harsh words he had flung at the elf over the years.
"I'm sorry," he said contritely, and Fenris blinked slowly, before reaching up to tangle his fingers in the loose curls at the nape of Anders' neck, pulling him down into a gentle kiss.
Tabby, in the corner, soon had two kittens curled up against her warm side, and her short tail wagged a beat into the floor of the clinic.