Ne Quaesieris, Non Dico Ch. 1 - Fugitive

He flees into the darkness, heart pounding, back aflame, sick and wounded, half-starved and more terrified than he can ever remember being in his life. The rain drenches him to the skin in minutes, ice-cold as it plasters his hair to his head and his thin shirt to his skin. He doesn't know if it's blood or rainwater running down his back.

Shouts from behind; they've discovered him gone already, templars spilling out of the doors into the rain and the night. He doesn't have time. He knows he won't get far in this state.

He slips on the rain-slick steps of the Chantry, plummeting headlong down, unable to check his fall. He sprawls upon the cold, hard stones, dazed; he rolls to his feet, bleeding and unsteady. The sound of armoured men pounding down the steps high above spurs him into movement; staggering a little, he picks a direction at random and runs.

He's free, but he has no idea where he is. Town houses, some of them mansions, loom out of the darkness on either side of the street. The noble quarter of the city, he'd guess; he needs to find somewhere to hide, where he can hole up until the magebane wears off and he can heal up.

He stumbles, bracing himself against the wall of a house. He glances at it;  old, dilapidated, abandoned; its owner long gone, likely dead. The perfect place for a half-dead mage to hide awhile perhaps. His phylactery is smashed; they'll have to hunt him on foot the hard way. He just has to lie low for a while.

He finds a broken window and manages to squeeze through the broken frame. The room is dark, silent; the air heavy with dust kicked up from his tumble onto the musty old carpet. He picks himself up and stumbles further into the house.

Mummified corpses are scattered all through the house. He wonders what in the Void happened here, in the small part of his brain not preoccupied with immediate survival. He finds a set of stairs leading upwards and heads up.

The rush of adrenaline from his giddy escape is wearing off already, leaving him shaking and sick as he stumbles into a bedroom. He makes it as far as the bed before his knees give way and he collapses face-down onto the soft covers.

His last thoughts flee him as everything goes black.

***

Fenris is tired, footsore and aching. The cold rain does nothing to improve his mood, already souring now he is away from the bright lights of the tavern and the company of his friends. He should be glad, he thinks; they killed fifteen slavers today. But victory tastes like ashes and bitterness in his mouth - or perhaps rough cheap wine, drunk in vain hopes of washing away the memory of the pens in the caves and the unfortunate remains of the slaves they'd arrived too late to save.

He lets himself into the ruined old mansion that has been his home here in Kirkwall for three years now. Somehow it has never felt so lonely as it does tonight. He snorts to himself at the maudlin turn of his thoughts. He climbs the stairs towards his room, ignoring the corpses scattered around the landing.

He halts barely three paces into the room as his eyes fall upon the still figure sprawled face-down across the foot of the bed. Instantly, his sword is in his hand as he approaches the bed, but the figure doesn’t move; as he comes to stand over the unconscious blond man, he realises why. The man is near-starved, the back of his shirt soaked with rainwater and blood. He doesn't stir as Fenris lays down his sword and turns him over then slowly peels open the tattered remains of the sodden shirt.

The elf recoils with a muttered oath. He can count the man’s ribs, but it is the sight of the burns, contusions and lacerations across those ribs - some half-healed, some fresh and still raw and bleeding, some that look inflamed and infected - that have him swearing; the clear signs of torture that has taken place over many months. The thin, bony wrists are mottled dark with bruises and old blood from months spent shackled, as are the ankles.The unconscious man might have been one of those unfortunate wretches that Fenris, Hawke and their companions had been too late to save - except this man’s chest still stirs yet with breath, with life.

He doesn’t stop to wonder how this escaped slave has managed to find his way to Fenris’ home. He is clearly in need of help.

Fenris strides to the bathroom and sets the bathing pool set into the floor to filling, thankful once again for the dwarven plumbing the mansion’s previous owner had had the foresight and riches to have installed. As hot water begins to steam the air, the elf lights candles before fetching clean towels, then returns to the bedroom to light more candles before setting out a healing kit and a couple of healing potions upon a small table he drags over to stand beside the bed. Then he strips the tattered rags from the unconscious man’s body.

The blond man is alarmingly light as Fenris carried him into the bathing chamber. He lays him down upon a towel beside the pool then checks the temperature of the water before turning it off and stripping off his own clothes. Then he steps into the water before gathering the unconscious man in his arms and lowering him into the water.

Still, the man does not stir as Fenris gently bathes him, dirt and blood swirling away into the water as he sponges his limp body clean then washes the long, dirty blond hair. It had been hard to tell the man’s age beneath the dirt and the scraggly beard, but once shaved and clean it is easy to see that he is perhaps somewhere in his mid to late twenties - certainly not much more than thirty at most. A single gold hoop adorns his left ear; a curious vanity left by his captors. Fenris wonders why. A sign of ownership perhaps?

Once back in the bedroom, Fenris carefully dries the man then himself before donning a clean tunic and pants. He sets to work, smearing salve over whip cuts, burns and bruises before applying dressings, poultices, bandages. He checks the man’s body carefully for any sign of a brand of ownership but finds none; he frowns however at the purple bruises upon the unconscious man’s hips and the heat now radiating from his spare frame, his forehead hot and feverish to touch. Fenris purses his lips, the frown that has not left his face since discovering the wounded man only deepening.

Fenris has no clothes that would fit his erstwhile guest; the man is taller than Fenris. The elf sighs wordlessly, then cradles the man with one arm, tilting his head back and his mouth open before trickling a healing potion past those slack, pale lips a little at a time as the man swallows reflexively until all the dark red liquid is gone. A second potion goes the way of the first, and then Fenris gently lays him in his own bed and draws the covers up to the pale chest, now swathed in clean white bandages. He sits back, unable to do anything more for his patient.

Tired, Fenris draws a chair over to sit vigil over the unconscious man, resolving to speak to Hawke about this in the morning. At some point, watching passes into sleep as the night draws on and the other man does not stir.

***

By morning, Fenris’ guest is tossing and turning feverishly; it is his quiet, faint moaning that draws the elf from sleep, starting up in alarm with one hand reaching for his sword before he recalls the events of the previous night.

He leans over the feverish man and frowns at the sweat beading his brow as his head rolls upon the pillow, another pained moan escaping his pale lips as he clutches fitfully at the covers. The elf trails fingers across the man’s forehead then snatches them back as the man’s eyes suddenly snap open. They are the hue of dark honey, a rich amber flecked with brown; they stare through Fenris, glazed and fever-bright.

“Please... please don’t hurt me,” he slurs, his voice a weak whisper. “I’ll be good, Ser, I promise! Please don’t shut me away in the dark again!”

Fenris recoils, swallowing hard, before he leans over the man again. “You are safe,” he tells him quietly. “No-one will lock you in the dark again or hurt you.”

“Safe?” The amber eyes blink at him drowsily. “Safe....”

The man’s eyes slowly drift closed again and he gives a small sigh before settling into a deeper sleep. Fenris exhales slowly before turning away, a little shaken.

***

He is afraid to leave the man. The fever rages, unabated, and Fenris fears for the man’s life. There is a fire in his skin, and nothing Fenris can do seems to abate it. The man rambles at first - pleas, begging for Fenris not to hurt him, promising to behave. Begging not to be locked in the dark again. He whimpers and moans in his sleep, but gradually he grows quieter and quieter until an unnerving stillness settles over him, his breathing shallow and harsh. Fenris is unable to rouse him, not even to take a sip of water, and as evening draws on his face seems impossibly gaunt.

The elf passes a sleepless night, afraid that each breath the sick man draws may be his last. Yet morning comes and still the man clings to life, stubborn.

Fenris still does not know the man’s name.