To Bleed the Mage - microfic
Title: To Bleed the Mage
Author: rubypop
Rating: M
Warnings: Violence, rape/noncon
Word Count: 2443
Pairing: Fenris/F!Hawke
Summary: Fenris can't resolve his hatred of mages -- the very sight of Lady Hawke and Anders's compassion boils his blood. When Hawke visits him at his mansion one night, his rage takes control.
Read it: livejournal, tumblr
"Take it," she urged, pressing the amulet into his hand. "I know you'd at least appreciate the sentiment."
From the clinic entrance, Fenris scowled. Hawke was closing Anders's fingers around the trinket.
"I," Anders murmured, his eyes filling with some knowing emotion. "I don't know what to say."
"Say nothing," Hawke said. She moved closer. "Except for perhaps, 'Thank you.'"
Anders smiled. He threaded the silken cord over his head.
"Thank you," he said, and altogether the threads of lyrium in Fenris's skin burned, like fine razors, when Hawke gently tucked the amulet into Anders's shirt, and her small fingers lingered over his heart.
#
He heard her voice echoing through the mansion only after the dim, momentary suffusion of his markings had faded.
"Fenris?" And then slow footsteps, their hesitation making him scowl.
Fenris swallowed a measure of bitter, biting wine. The Agreggio had not dulled his irritation, as he had hoped it would. Its dry bouquet and sanguine hue only tempered it. He tossed the bottle to one side, and the crash of shattering glass paused the footsteps' approach.
"Fenris," Hawke called out.
"Just I," he shouted, nearly laughing.
She was at his door then, peering at him disapprovingly.
"You know, your neighbors are bound to call the guard sooner or later," she pointed out.
He lifted his eyebrows in mock disbelief. "Well, then I shall meet them with open arms." He extended his arms and spread his fingers. The firelight gleamed from the long edges of his armored claws.
She shook her head but betrayed a smile as she crossed the room. She took a seat on the gilded couch across from him.
"Save any for me at least?" she said, reaching for the bottles of vintage that lined the trestle table.
"A swallow or two," he murmured. His eyes fell upon her reaching arm. The sleeve of her robe had pulled back, exposing the wrist. Thin scars striped the white flesh, marching ladder-like to the meat of her palm, where keloids had formed over well-used gouges. He set his jaw. The sight of that slight hand closing over Anders's crawled into his brain.
Hawke drank from the bottle, and gave a sporting cough when she swallowed. "Maker," she gasped. "I can't tell if this wine is just old or if it's turned."
"You can't conjure up a spell that would aid you?" he uttered with a glare.
She stared at him, pausing mid-sip. "Excuse me?" she said.
He simply waved a hand at her and shook his head. The wine blurred his vision momentarily, and he blinked his eyes hard.
"Fenris," she said, lowering the bottle with a thunk. "If there's something you need to say --"
"Well, serah, I've said it," he bit out. The heat was rising in him again. "You've got your dagger with you, I've no doubt. Use it. Throw your maleficant blood sorcery about with abandon and reveal the wine's secrets."
"What are you on about?" she said, and the exasperation in her voice enraged him.
He shoved himself from the couch and darted forward, shoving his face close to hers.
"You know of my past," he said. "You know of the horrors I suffered in Tevinter. And yet you sympathize with their tyranny because you are a mage? So much that you would gift a very symbol of the Imperium like a lover's bauble? To that --" He grasped for the words. "-- that wretched propaganda-peddling, demon-harboring Anders?"
"Sympathize?" she said. "Fenris, I gave Anders a gift. That does not mean I sympathize with slavers. You're drunk." She rose from the couch and reached for him. "Be reasonable --"
He jerked back, away from her hand, and his markings glowed hot, searing him. And then he moved forward again, snatching her wrist, and gripped it in his claws.
"Don't you touch me," he said, as the markings gleamed white. "You will never lay a hand on me, or by the Maker I will make you wish you hadn't."
She stared at him, and tried to jerk her arm away, but he held it. His eyes narrowed. He studied the lines on her wrist again.
"Tell me," he said. "When you are making love to your precious revolutionary, has Anders never noticed the scars in your flesh?"
"Maker, Fenris," Hawke said.
"Odd, isn't it? How he claims to take issue with blood magic, but eagerly lies with a maleficar when given the chance," he went on.
"Let me go," she said, and leveled him with her gaze.
They remained still for a moment, staring each other down. Fenris flexed his hand, testing her with the fine points of his claws. Then he pressed down suddenly with his index finger, penetrating her skin with the pinprick of a single claw. A thread of blood trickled down the sallow wrist.
"How much blood exactly," he said, "does it take to cast one spell?"
She yanked back her arm then, and tried to step away. But his fingers clamped down harder, and he pulled her toward him, so close that they were eye-to-eye, the tips of their noses nearly touching.
"Not enough yet, it seems," he said.
"Stop this," she said, and for a moment in her eyes he saw another mage, saw the apprentice Hadriana staring up at him and pleading for her life.
He flung her to the gilded couch, and she struck it so forcefully that it shuddered back with a crash. He was kneeling over her when her arm came down and a wine bottle smashed over his head.
He dropped. Slivers of glass rained from his hair. She was a tangle of limbs beneath him, flailing arms and clawing hands that shoved him away, and he fell against the table, sending the remaining bottles askew. She flew from the couch as he slumped to the floor.
"Braska," he cursed, his voice slurring.
He snatched her ankle before she could take a second step.
A lowing roar in his head drowned out his thoughts. Warm, slippery wetness stung his eyes. He pulled her down. She twisted about as she fell, but he seized her wrists and pushed her back. He rose, grimacing, and staggered to one side, dragging her along. His markings scorched him, an infinite number of fine little strands woven deep into his flesh from the miniscule pinpricks of that years-old ritual.
She was shouting his name, over and over, but he heard only the roar of blood in his ears, and the memory of sharp blows and kicks in the middle of the night, when Hadriana would jostle him from sleep.
Roughly he wiped the blood from his eyes with the bare palm of his hand.
"Maleficar whore," he said.
He had crossed the room, had released one of her arms to wrench open the bedchamber door when her hand flew to her robe to reach for the dagger that he knew was hidden there, and he slammed her against the doorframe and clenched both of her wrists together behind her back. He ripped the dagger from her belt, shredding fabric, and flung it back into the sitting room.
"Did you mean to make me your puppet?" he said. "Or did you mean to gouge my flesh yourself?"
"Stop this, Fenris," she said. Her voice shook and she glanced into the chamber. "If you do this, Anders will know. Fenris. Anders will know."
His chest pumped up and down. His head roared. He pulled her arms farther back, so that her legs buckled, and he towered over her, staring her down with slitted eyes.
"I would have him here watching," he said.
He gripped her jaw, and when she tried to wrestle away he forced her to look at him. He pressed his mouth to hers, and held her there.
Blood on her mouth when they parted, dotting her white lip. His blood, that trickled down his face even now.
She spit in his face.
His hand slid from her jaw to her throat, gripping it.
#
He stripped the robe from her shoulders as they stood over the bed. Her flesh was shockingly white against the tallow-smoke hue of her hair, and smooth, free of scars, pale to the point of near-transparency, and tender blue veins shone through. The scars marred her forearms, her palms, white knitted stripes of flesh that seemed to intrude, and were ugly.
He forced her to the bed and she fought him, but in a shock of lyrium his hand glowed against her white breast as he pushed her flat onto the mattress. He yanked the rest of her robe away, and his heartbeat quickened at the sight of her so exposed.
He'd wondered, sometimes -- there were nights during the past three years since they'd first met, when he'd lie awake wondering -- how she might look, the taste of her, of having her. And now here she was.
His face drew in disgust when he saw the scars on her thighs. They raked downward in parallel lines from her hips to her knees. They were not, however, the thin, neat incisions of a blade, but thickened, knotted claw marks.
He traced them with his fingertips, lightly following every dip and rise, five gashes on each thigh, that must have been cut deeply.
He opened his belt and she drove her foot into the mattress, tried to slide away. His armored claws clamped about her shoulders and dragged her back.
"Should you scream," he uttered, "should you attempt to flee from me again, I will tear out your throat. Damn the consequences."
She set her jaw and fixed him with a hard stare. He reached down with one hand and undid his trousers. He crawled onto the bed, and, parting her legs, he entered her.
She sucked in her breath. He held her gaze as he shifted his hips forward, pushing deeper, until he let out a long, shuddering breath. Her small hands lifted weakly from the mattress as if in protest, as if they would stop him, and he gripped her shoulders and bore down on them, pulling back out of her, and pushing back in.
"Ah, Hawke," he breathed.
She was warm, yes, the core of her like fever. He could feel the pulses of blood that ran through her. He had to force himself to go slowly, to find a rhythm to prolong this sensation. He ran the points of his claws against her cheek, the delicate soft flesh of this hateful apostate.
She was looking away, looking anywhere but at him, and pain shone in her eyes, a weakness that sparked some anger in him, so that his markings gleamed, just faintly, prickling the surface of his skin.
He lowered his head, thrusting ever so slightly deeper, harder, and felt her tense up around him, her knees pressing against his sides, bracing against him, as though she could push him away. He moaned, touching his lips to the damp hollow of her collarbone.
"Tell me, in the throes of passion," he murmured into her ear, "how many times did Justice come to take you?"
She twisted her upper body away, but he pushed her back down and held her there.
"We've all of us seen how he loses control over lesser things," he said. His voice was husky, breathless. "And so did he enjoy you, take pleasure in your cries? And how many times did sweet Anders apologize -- ah -- as it happened again -- and again -- and again?"
"Never," she whispered. "Justice never --"
His markings lit up, and reflected in her eyes, and for an instant he saw himself in them, his face twisted, scowling, enraged.
"Demon courters, the lot of you," he spat. He lifted his head and they locked eyes. He ran his hands down the scars on her legs, following each line with his fingers.
"And so it was not Justice," he said, "that gave these to you?"
She looked away.
"Foul beast," he said, and he leaned back, loosening the buttons on his tunic. His fingers slid with sweat. He was panting now, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head to the ceiling, losing his breath.
"Maker," he gasped.
When he looked at her once again, she had driven her fists into her eyes, hiding from him. Her entire body was tensing now, compressing, her elbows clamped to her chest, her knees squeezing him. He pumped her harder and a thrill of ecstasy raced through him.
The temperature was climbing -- beads of sweat had collected on her upper lip, trickled down the soft skin between her breasts. He shuddered against her, into her. He pried her hands from her eyes. She sat up then, quick as an arrow, and her hand clasped his face, shoving him back, as she pushed with all of her strength, her fingernails raking his cheeks, digging into his forehead, and he seized her wrist, his other hand forcing her back down by the throat, and he cursed, fucking her harder.
She betrayed the tiniest whimper as he gripped her throat with both hands, menacing her, swearing at her, choking her.
She grasped feebly at his hands. The pointed steel of his claws had cut her, were still cutting her. She thrashed underneath him. His ecstasy was mounting, climbing, higher and higher. Beneath his compressing fingers he could feel the desperate throb of her jugular, it quickened with panic beneath her flesh, and he knew how her heart must be hammering, perhaps in time with his, as his own pounded wildly, out of control, in his chest. She tried to gasp, tried again, and she was shaking her head, pleading with him silently. And on and on he fucked her, awash the sweat-salted fragrance of her flesh, the torpid heat, the gleam of blood on his claws.
She was reaching for him again, but weakly, her hands brushed against his chest and could lift no higher.
Her eyes were closing, the tension that thrummed through her body loosening.
He bit out a low cry and released her, falling back, his body giving a jolt, and he shuddered, spilling his seed on the silk comforter of the bed.
He steadied himself with one hand, gasping for breath. Hawke lay back wordlessly, had turned away from him, was touching her throat tenderly. Fenris wiped the sweat from his forehead, steadied himself again. He closed his eyes and fell back against the bed beside her. He studied the sheen of red that coated the tips of his claws.
"Damn the consequences," he said, and Hawke didn't speak.
###
Author: rubypop
Rating: M
Warnings: Violence, rape/noncon
Word Count: 2443
Pairing: Fenris/F!Hawke
Summary: Fenris can't resolve his hatred of mages -- the very sight of Lady Hawke and Anders's compassion boils his blood. When Hawke visits him at his mansion one night, his rage takes control.
Read it: livejournal, tumblr
"Take it," she urged, pressing the amulet into his hand. "I know you'd at least appreciate the sentiment."
From the clinic entrance, Fenris scowled. Hawke was closing Anders's fingers around the trinket.
"I," Anders murmured, his eyes filling with some knowing emotion. "I don't know what to say."
"Say nothing," Hawke said. She moved closer. "Except for perhaps, 'Thank you.'"
Anders smiled. He threaded the silken cord over his head.
"Thank you," he said, and altogether the threads of lyrium in Fenris's skin burned, like fine razors, when Hawke gently tucked the amulet into Anders's shirt, and her small fingers lingered over his heart.
#
He heard her voice echoing through the mansion only after the dim, momentary suffusion of his markings had faded.
"Fenris?" And then slow footsteps, their hesitation making him scowl.
Fenris swallowed a measure of bitter, biting wine. The Agreggio had not dulled his irritation, as he had hoped it would. Its dry bouquet and sanguine hue only tempered it. He tossed the bottle to one side, and the crash of shattering glass paused the footsteps' approach.
"Fenris," Hawke called out.
"Just I," he shouted, nearly laughing.
She was at his door then, peering at him disapprovingly.
"You know, your neighbors are bound to call the guard sooner or later," she pointed out.
He lifted his eyebrows in mock disbelief. "Well, then I shall meet them with open arms." He extended his arms and spread his fingers. The firelight gleamed from the long edges of his armored claws.
She shook her head but betrayed a smile as she crossed the room. She took a seat on the gilded couch across from him.
"Save any for me at least?" she said, reaching for the bottles of vintage that lined the trestle table.
"A swallow or two," he murmured. His eyes fell upon her reaching arm. The sleeve of her robe had pulled back, exposing the wrist. Thin scars striped the white flesh, marching ladder-like to the meat of her palm, where keloids had formed over well-used gouges. He set his jaw. The sight of that slight hand closing over Anders's crawled into his brain.
Hawke drank from the bottle, and gave a sporting cough when she swallowed. "Maker," she gasped. "I can't tell if this wine is just old or if it's turned."
"You can't conjure up a spell that would aid you?" he uttered with a glare.
She stared at him, pausing mid-sip. "Excuse me?" she said.
He simply waved a hand at her and shook his head. The wine blurred his vision momentarily, and he blinked his eyes hard.
"Fenris," she said, lowering the bottle with a thunk. "If there's something you need to say --"
"Well, serah, I've said it," he bit out. The heat was rising in him again. "You've got your dagger with you, I've no doubt. Use it. Throw your maleficant blood sorcery about with abandon and reveal the wine's secrets."
"What are you on about?" she said, and the exasperation in her voice enraged him.
He shoved himself from the couch and darted forward, shoving his face close to hers.
"You know of my past," he said. "You know of the horrors I suffered in Tevinter. And yet you sympathize with their tyranny because you are a mage? So much that you would gift a very symbol of the Imperium like a lover's bauble? To that --" He grasped for the words. "-- that wretched propaganda-peddling, demon-harboring Anders?"
"Sympathize?" she said. "Fenris, I gave Anders a gift. That does not mean I sympathize with slavers. You're drunk." She rose from the couch and reached for him. "Be reasonable --"
He jerked back, away from her hand, and his markings glowed hot, searing him. And then he moved forward again, snatching her wrist, and gripped it in his claws.
"Don't you touch me," he said, as the markings gleamed white. "You will never lay a hand on me, or by the Maker I will make you wish you hadn't."
She stared at him, and tried to jerk her arm away, but he held it. His eyes narrowed. He studied the lines on her wrist again.
"Tell me," he said. "When you are making love to your precious revolutionary, has Anders never noticed the scars in your flesh?"
"Maker, Fenris," Hawke said.
"Odd, isn't it? How he claims to take issue with blood magic, but eagerly lies with a maleficar when given the chance," he went on.
"Let me go," she said, and leveled him with her gaze.
They remained still for a moment, staring each other down. Fenris flexed his hand, testing her with the fine points of his claws. Then he pressed down suddenly with his index finger, penetrating her skin with the pinprick of a single claw. A thread of blood trickled down the sallow wrist.
"How much blood exactly," he said, "does it take to cast one spell?"
She yanked back her arm then, and tried to step away. But his fingers clamped down harder, and he pulled her toward him, so close that they were eye-to-eye, the tips of their noses nearly touching.
"Not enough yet, it seems," he said.
"Stop this," she said, and for a moment in her eyes he saw another mage, saw the apprentice Hadriana staring up at him and pleading for her life.
He flung her to the gilded couch, and she struck it so forcefully that it shuddered back with a crash. He was kneeling over her when her arm came down and a wine bottle smashed over his head.
He dropped. Slivers of glass rained from his hair. She was a tangle of limbs beneath him, flailing arms and clawing hands that shoved him away, and he fell against the table, sending the remaining bottles askew. She flew from the couch as he slumped to the floor.
"Braska," he cursed, his voice slurring.
He snatched her ankle before she could take a second step.
A lowing roar in his head drowned out his thoughts. Warm, slippery wetness stung his eyes. He pulled her down. She twisted about as she fell, but he seized her wrists and pushed her back. He rose, grimacing, and staggered to one side, dragging her along. His markings scorched him, an infinite number of fine little strands woven deep into his flesh from the miniscule pinpricks of that years-old ritual.
She was shouting his name, over and over, but he heard only the roar of blood in his ears, and the memory of sharp blows and kicks in the middle of the night, when Hadriana would jostle him from sleep.
Roughly he wiped the blood from his eyes with the bare palm of his hand.
"Maleficar whore," he said.
He had crossed the room, had released one of her arms to wrench open the bedchamber door when her hand flew to her robe to reach for the dagger that he knew was hidden there, and he slammed her against the doorframe and clenched both of her wrists together behind her back. He ripped the dagger from her belt, shredding fabric, and flung it back into the sitting room.
"Did you mean to make me your puppet?" he said. "Or did you mean to gouge my flesh yourself?"
"Stop this, Fenris," she said. Her voice shook and she glanced into the chamber. "If you do this, Anders will know. Fenris. Anders will know."
His chest pumped up and down. His head roared. He pulled her arms farther back, so that her legs buckled, and he towered over her, staring her down with slitted eyes.
"I would have him here watching," he said.
He gripped her jaw, and when she tried to wrestle away he forced her to look at him. He pressed his mouth to hers, and held her there.
Blood on her mouth when they parted, dotting her white lip. His blood, that trickled down his face even now.
She spit in his face.
His hand slid from her jaw to her throat, gripping it.
#
He stripped the robe from her shoulders as they stood over the bed. Her flesh was shockingly white against the tallow-smoke hue of her hair, and smooth, free of scars, pale to the point of near-transparency, and tender blue veins shone through. The scars marred her forearms, her palms, white knitted stripes of flesh that seemed to intrude, and were ugly.
He forced her to the bed and she fought him, but in a shock of lyrium his hand glowed against her white breast as he pushed her flat onto the mattress. He yanked the rest of her robe away, and his heartbeat quickened at the sight of her so exposed.
He'd wondered, sometimes -- there were nights during the past three years since they'd first met, when he'd lie awake wondering -- how she might look, the taste of her, of having her. And now here she was.
His face drew in disgust when he saw the scars on her thighs. They raked downward in parallel lines from her hips to her knees. They were not, however, the thin, neat incisions of a blade, but thickened, knotted claw marks.
He traced them with his fingertips, lightly following every dip and rise, five gashes on each thigh, that must have been cut deeply.
He opened his belt and she drove her foot into the mattress, tried to slide away. His armored claws clamped about her shoulders and dragged her back.
"Should you scream," he uttered, "should you attempt to flee from me again, I will tear out your throat. Damn the consequences."
She set her jaw and fixed him with a hard stare. He reached down with one hand and undid his trousers. He crawled onto the bed, and, parting her legs, he entered her.
She sucked in her breath. He held her gaze as he shifted his hips forward, pushing deeper, until he let out a long, shuddering breath. Her small hands lifted weakly from the mattress as if in protest, as if they would stop him, and he gripped her shoulders and bore down on them, pulling back out of her, and pushing back in.
"Ah, Hawke," he breathed.
She was warm, yes, the core of her like fever. He could feel the pulses of blood that ran through her. He had to force himself to go slowly, to find a rhythm to prolong this sensation. He ran the points of his claws against her cheek, the delicate soft flesh of this hateful apostate.
She was looking away, looking anywhere but at him, and pain shone in her eyes, a weakness that sparked some anger in him, so that his markings gleamed, just faintly, prickling the surface of his skin.
He lowered his head, thrusting ever so slightly deeper, harder, and felt her tense up around him, her knees pressing against his sides, bracing against him, as though she could push him away. He moaned, touching his lips to the damp hollow of her collarbone.
"Tell me, in the throes of passion," he murmured into her ear, "how many times did Justice come to take you?"
She twisted her upper body away, but he pushed her back down and held her there.
"We've all of us seen how he loses control over lesser things," he said. His voice was husky, breathless. "And so did he enjoy you, take pleasure in your cries? And how many times did sweet Anders apologize -- ah -- as it happened again -- and again -- and again?"
"Never," she whispered. "Justice never --"
His markings lit up, and reflected in her eyes, and for an instant he saw himself in them, his face twisted, scowling, enraged.
"Demon courters, the lot of you," he spat. He lifted his head and they locked eyes. He ran his hands down the scars on her legs, following each line with his fingers.
"And so it was not Justice," he said, "that gave these to you?"
She looked away.
"Foul beast," he said, and he leaned back, loosening the buttons on his tunic. His fingers slid with sweat. He was panting now, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head to the ceiling, losing his breath.
"Maker," he gasped.
When he looked at her once again, she had driven her fists into her eyes, hiding from him. Her entire body was tensing now, compressing, her elbows clamped to her chest, her knees squeezing him. He pumped her harder and a thrill of ecstasy raced through him.
The temperature was climbing -- beads of sweat had collected on her upper lip, trickled down the soft skin between her breasts. He shuddered against her, into her. He pried her hands from her eyes. She sat up then, quick as an arrow, and her hand clasped his face, shoving him back, as she pushed with all of her strength, her fingernails raking his cheeks, digging into his forehead, and he seized her wrist, his other hand forcing her back down by the throat, and he cursed, fucking her harder.
She betrayed the tiniest whimper as he gripped her throat with both hands, menacing her, swearing at her, choking her.
She grasped feebly at his hands. The pointed steel of his claws had cut her, were still cutting her. She thrashed underneath him. His ecstasy was mounting, climbing, higher and higher. Beneath his compressing fingers he could feel the desperate throb of her jugular, it quickened with panic beneath her flesh, and he knew how her heart must be hammering, perhaps in time with his, as his own pounded wildly, out of control, in his chest. She tried to gasp, tried again, and she was shaking her head, pleading with him silently. And on and on he fucked her, awash the sweat-salted fragrance of her flesh, the torpid heat, the gleam of blood on his claws.
She was reaching for him again, but weakly, her hands brushed against his chest and could lift no higher.
Her eyes were closing, the tension that thrummed through her body loosening.
He bit out a low cry and released her, falling back, his body giving a jolt, and he shuddered, spilling his seed on the silk comforter of the bed.
He steadied himself with one hand, gasping for breath. Hawke lay back wordlessly, had turned away from him, was touching her throat tenderly. Fenris wiped the sweat from his forehead, steadied himself again. He closed his eyes and fell back against the bed beside her. He studied the sheen of red that coated the tips of his claws.
"Damn the consequences," he said, and Hawke didn't speak.
###