How about Fenris' reaction to the letter of Hawke being left in the fade?

The Vimmark Mountains were mostly rough terrain but there was one settlement Fenris found himself returning to every couple weeks for a hot meal, sleep in an actual bed and to get supplies. Fenris’ supplies had run dangerously low, the stores he had lifted from the salvers ran thin, it had been weeks since he had seen any on the roads. Not that they were gone, he still found evidence of their travels through the Free Marches, but he needed to put his coin to good use before he could follow their trails again.

The town was very small and Fenris was acutely aware of how much he stood out when he stepped into their one tavern. The men inside looked up at him every time, curious eyes at the marked elf, he had laid their pockets with gold the first time he arrived so that they wouldn’t speak of him. It was hard enough to travel without his name being whispered under someone’s breathe, what with the incident in Kirkwall and the dwarf’s book, he didn’t need these men telling some bold slaver that he came by every few weeks.

The owner nodded at Fenris as he approached, “Room for the night?” The man said as he pulled out his ring of keys, knowing the elf was good for it. “We have a roast planned for later tonight, it will keep well for traveling.” 

Fenris nodded and thanked the man, taking the key from the ancient wood counter and moving to the familiar path up the stairs. The room was humble, cozy, and with the age of the tavern probably had many stories to tell of those who had stayed before him. He laid his sword and pack down at the foot of the bed, started a small fire in the old stone hearth and collapsed onto the bed. It had been over three weeks since he had laid on anything softer than mountainous earth, so long since he had blankets to wrap his hands around. His eyes eased open, his mind travelling far away from here, his heart heavy with his isolation. He pulled a thick woolen blanket over his shoulder, wishing it was as heavy as Hawke’s embrace, trying to remember his words in his own voice. It had been too long and Fenris was tired.  

Fenris eventually pulled himself up from the bed, feeling every ache in his body, every nip of lyrium as he left for the supplies he needed. He descended the old stairs silently, was about to slip out the door when the owner caught sight of him and called “A letter came for you!” Fenris turned, “I almost forgot, but its for you.”

Fenris’ heart leapt, everything inside of him perking up at the thought. A letter from Hawke? It had to be, no one else knew that he was frequenting this place. “It’s from that uh, what was it called? Inquisition! Not that- its any of my business, of course, but a courier brought it a few days after your last visit. That why I nearly forgot, its been some time.”

The handwriting on the envelope was not Hawke’s. Disappointment hung in Fenris’ chest for a moment before he began to open the envelope. He knew Varric had gotten entangled in the Inquisition, but if the dwarf knew how to get a hold of him he must have spoken with Hawke. The inquisition must have more reliable means of couriering letters than Hawke did on his own. Wherever he was. Fenris tried to ignore the small touch of jealousy he felt, knowing Hawke would have been in communication with Varric but he had heard nothing. 

The letter was written on fine paper, several in fact, the dwarf’s handwriting neater and more intentional in their words than Fenris could ever remember seeing his writing. He sat at one of the tavern’s tables, pouring over the first page. Reading Varric explain the inquisition’s investigation into the wardens, wondering why this could possibly be of interest to him. The letter went on until Fenris’ eyes found Hawke’s name. His heart skipped a beat at it, the letters plain on paper, he remembered learning how to write it. He followed each sentence  tensely, confused as to the tone Varric had written in, how objective it was, without the style or familiarity he expected.

“I don’t know how to write this.” A sentence said, in the middle of a lengthy description of him and Hawke and others Fenris did not know going on a mission. Fenris felt his heart stop at the uncharacteristic statement. “I am so sorry Fenris.”

A few minutes of reading passed when Fenris’ chair hit the floor behind him, before his gaunlet clawed at the tavern counter, his other hand pulling the innkeeper’s shirt collar towards him. “Read this.” Fenris hissed, his shaking hand pointing at a sentence on the letter. The men in the tavern had stood, frightened, the innkeeper terrified.

“W-what?” The man stuttered.

“Read this sentence to me.” Fenris tried to measure his voice, but he really could not even hope to control the sudden turmoil his emotions had been suddenly thrown into.

“’Hawke stayed in the fade’” The man said, his voice twisted in confusion. Fenris shook his head angerily and demanded it read again. “’Hawke stayed in the fade. No one was able to open it again. I am so sorry Fenris I could not save him.”

Fenris let go of the man, scrapped the paper back up, something inside of him trembling and crumbling away. His shaking hand collected the pages, carefully laid them together, feeling as if his body was moving on its own, his mind shutting down. The lights going out. A numbness running through his lyrium skin. “When did this letter arrive.” He barely recognized his voice.

“Weeks ago.” The owner said, struggling to regain his composure. Motioning to the other men that everything was ok. Nothing was ok. “A few days after your last visit.”

It would have taken almost three weeks for the letter to arrive here, two if lucky. Hawke had been left in the fade for over a month. If he had only stayed longer his last visit, he could have been in Ferelden now, he could have done something.

But it was too late, there wasn’t anything he could do.

Fenris receiving the letter that the inquisitor chose to leave Hawke in the fade— then possibly hawkes return???

I hope this works ok, anon! Thanks!!

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Fenris had nightmares, after he got the rest of the storyfrom Varric.

The damned dwarf was, if nothing else, a storyteller, and hemade it far too easy for Fenris to see it all as if he had been there himself(as he rightfully should have been). The Fade, alien and oppressive, shadowedand green, with its shifting environs and demonic denizens.

How would Fear appear to Fenris? Would it have worn hismaster’s face – or something far more difficult to consider? Himself in eternalservitude, perhaps, chains at his neck and wrists. Or Hawke, dead and rotting, tranquil, possessed.

There were too many thingsFenris feared.

Varric claimed that for Hawke, Fear had been a spider.Clicking jaws, numerous eyes, arching, hairy legs. He put himself forward, andhe looked at the Inquisitor with those hard golden eyes, and he promised tohold the way.

Fenris dreamed it had come to pass that way – Hawke,staying, instead of the warden Stroud. He dreamed he was no longer in Kirkwall, but instead back on the farm theyhad owned, and a letter came, and that was how he learned. The irony was notlost on him in waking hours – that he might have used the reading skills Hawkehad so laboriously taught him simply to learn of his lover’s demise. He began to hate the sight of the letters he had struggled to diligently to earn.

He dreamed it, night after night. Hawke, torn apart and forgotten, lost to the green and the Fear and the Fade. 

Fenris could feel the slide ofhis thumb under the envelope. The throb in his heart as he read the words. He could not shake the way the writing blurred against his eyes, losing meaning. His knees lost all strength andbuckled. In the floor of their farmhouse, he stared into the black void of afuture that did not hold Hawke, and he felt his soul pulled to pieces.

When Fenris woke from these dreams, it was violent – clawinghis way out of a world too terrible to grasp, forcing his way back to a realitywhere Hawke was alive and well and by his side.

And gazing down at Hawke’s sleeping form in the darkness, hefeared a night would come where the terror proved true, and it was not this world that was real, but the other.