2.06 || 3.03

Look after each other - Liadan Hawke/Isabela/Fenris - OT3 thoughts

From @delazeur​ and @khirsahle​‘s writing sprint. Posting this by itself so I can find it more easily later. Also, hopefully, to make @lemonsharks​ smile, as it’s pretty much their fault I think Liadan/Isabela/Fenris thoughts. 

Isabela is the love Hawke expects. The one that shapes to old childhood hopes and the words of favourite songs. All lurching delight and fumbling hope as the two circle each other and stare and glare and smile, Liadan growing wilder and Isabela more centered as they each, in their own way, say: let me. Let me.

 Let me in. Let me touch you. Let me love you.

(”I’ve never said that,” Hawke smiles at the thought of Isabela’s consternation over sentimental words, hands raised to ward them off even as the red Amell favour sits frayed and proud over her bicep. “Well. Maybe once. But I was cross with you, Hawke.”)

Isabela draws her. Delights her. Lust tangles up between them, the pirate’s hands at her throat, lip caught between her teeth in concentration as her thumb presses gently down while Liadan whispers and laughs.

(”I have you, sweet thing. There you are.”)

Fenris is different. They do not often look at each other. They are too busy. Bent heads over books or maps, her words caught between his teeth as she she teaches him the silly memory songs that made words stick in her mind.

(”I’m sorry, Fenris,” she tells him, three months of lessons behind them. She is delighted at his progress. Better than hers. Better than anything she’s ever seen. She’ll ruin it. “I forgot how bad I was at this,” she says. “I never learnt well. Just as Carver. We were both appallingly stupid at this. I—”

“-You,” he says, looking up from his slow progress, hair sticking up from where his hands have tangled, “Are a better teacher than you think.”

He is always surprised when he smiles, the warmth in his face flickering as he realises it’s there.

Liadan is never tired of it. Never prepared for the answering tug his smiles always call up in her.

One of them always looks away first, but there no pattern.

All three of them fight well. Liadan is used to Isabela’s ruthlessness, has learned to use her magic in arcs that the pirate can exploit with a kick or a cry or twin, shining blades. Has learned to spot rare gaps in Fenris’s guard, and let that same magic be as blunt and brutal as the sword in her friend’s hand.

Force magic. Ugly stuff that no one expects from the reedy singer with poor eyesight and freckles up her arms. She uses that, feels Isabela’s pride and appreciation. Laughs at the sight of them coming back to her, Isabela kicking at bottles and pebbles and Fenris grimacing as lyrium fades back into his skin.

(”I don’t to hurt you,” she’s said more than once. “If the magic is—”

“—It’s yours.” A shrug. He does not look at her and she wants to force it. Wants to hunker down and tilt his chin up and see. Use her height, her self. Demand understanding.

She hears Isabela’s voice in her head, feels the oldest and sorest and most familiar fight twisting in her gut. People aren’t problems, Hawke. Sometimes? Just back. Off.

She holds back, jaw clenched.)

When Leandra dies, when every second breath tastes like bile, and my mother is dead repeats as the bass beneath her heartbeat, they are there. Isabela first, kissing the corner of her mouth; rocking back and pushing forward; scarf askew and eyes half pleading, half embarrassed.

“I’m not good with this,” she says, and Liadan doesn’t have the words to say I know, or thank you. She just lets her head rests on Isabela’s breasts, lets herself shake. Laughs a little at the other woman’s small huff of relief that they’ve gone bodied and wordless in the dark.

Fenris is a small knock and heavy step, and Isabela shifts to make room.

(“Are you any better at saying sorry than I am?”

“I…Is anyone?”)

Hawke lets them talk over her. Lets herself feel warm and hopeless and lost and loved and nothing, while Isabela eases her into her lap and Fenris lets one mercifully gauntleted hand rest on her hair.

She and Fenris do not want each other. Not the same way. They’ve never quite said it—never tugged at the difference between their easy company and the shiver-hope-want of Isabela’s lips on her throat, Fenris’s hands at Isabela’s hips.

They never say, You are my best friend, and I love you. There is no need. Their voices blend, and in time he reads to her, her clumsy turned beautiful as he shares verse and ghost story and Varric’s latest worlds.

Isabela soars over them both, and catches them both in their laughter. 

Liadan wonders if she can ever find words all the world’s different sorts of need. 

She watches them together. Delights at the catch in her breath, the little, happy flip inside at the sight of Isabela’s scarred, clever fingers twining with Fenris’s over a table at the Hanged Man.

In songs, Hawke knows, she’d be jealous.

She reaches out. Covers their hands with hers.

There should be new songs.

“You don’t even like men,” Carver says, wide-eyed and credulous as his ten-year-old self even as he looms over her in Templar armor. 

“Well observed.” 

“But–”

“–It’s none of your business, little brother.” Liadan smiles at him, rueful and soft. “I know I say that too much, but in this? It’s true.”

Leaving him at the Gallows, her staff a heavy, anxious weight across her back, Liadan worries that she must grow used to the question. 

She wonders if, given time, it’ll be easier or harder to squash the urge to punch people in the face. 

She chuckles. Easier, she hopes. If not, she’ll need to learn better aim. 

Liadan is a better sailor than she expects. She’d assumed she’d be terrible. 

(”You always assume that, sweet.” 

“Hush.”)

Grief does not drift away in the small boat’s wake, Kirkwall’s ashes still clinging to her skin, but it feels like it might. Finding balance is beautiful. She loves the creaks and cries and the strange gurgling noises that sneak into her daily thoughts, the music in her head. She loves the loosening of Isabela’s shoulders. Her strong, heavy body gone light in the rigging as she throws familiar words around in desperately strange ways. Tacking and tying and mainsailing and boarding stars or ports. 

Liadan relishes the slow feeling of her world changing, splitting, and making sense. 

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