AN: I have no excuse for this. Absolutely none. My only defense is that if I write stuff like When Light Grows Less during periods of extreme stress, this is what I write when I'm perfectly content and relaxed and generally pleased with the world. I can't even pretend this isn't the sappiest thing I've ever written. I just...hope you enjoy it anyway?

I'm so sorry. (Okay. Not that sorry. Shh.) However, if you're concerned about emotional whiplash, I recently filled a series of kiss meme prompts on my tumblr (same username as here) that may help ease the transition. They're all tagged "kiss meme" and most of them feature Hawke & Fenris. So, you know. If you're interested.

Anyway. Have some fluff. :)

No Labor Like Love

-.-

"Well," Hawke says, leaning on the mantle, "I'm pregnant."

For a long moment there is no sound save Fenris's fingers tightening on the pages of his open book; then, very slowly, he looks up to meet her eyes.

"You are," he says, quite articulately, "what."

"With child," Hawke offers. "Expecting. In the family way." She makes a circle with her thumbs and forefingers and lays it over her stomach. "A little half-elf bun in the oven, if you prefer metaphor."

Fenris closes his eyes and opens them again in the dazed way of someone recently struck with a large brick. "I thought—you took a tea."

"Oh, I do. Every week, regular as clockwork."

"And…even so…"

"Many happy returns," Hawke tells him. "Your sheer virility has put the rest of Thedas to shame."

It is a mark of his absolute bewilderment that Fenris neither notices her sarcasm nor retorts to it. Instead he simply stares at her from the cheerful sunlit couch in her study, book forgotten on his knee, and blinks. (She counts three blinks before he tries to speak again. He must be very thrown indeed.) "You are sure of this."

"Oh, quite." She pushes away from the unlit hearth and crosses the room, hands on her hips. "Anders was kind enough to diagnose me—" she glances out the open window at the sky, ignoring the pleasant breeze that tugs at her hair, "—oh, about thirty minutes ago. Perhaps three-quarters of an hour."

Fenris makes a choked, inarticulate noise and the book slides from his lap to the red-striped cushion beside him, forgotten. "You went to the abomination with this?"

"Well, yes," Hawke drawls, reaching him, knocking his knee with her own. "That's what one does when one can't heal what's ailing one. One goes to one's spirit-possessed healer."

"He might be mistaken."

"I suppose so, but it seems a very common thing to get so wrong." She shrugs, bumping his knee again, then rocks back on her heels. "We'll find out in a few months, regardless."

"We'll find—" Fenris repeats, and then he stands so quickly he nearly knocks her from her feet. He grabs at her arms, gripping her until she is steady again. Then he tells her very seriously, "Hawke. You cannot be with child."

"Considering the last few months? Oh, I'm relatively certain I can."

"No—no. Hawke. This city is too—our lives—" His hands tighten on her arms and Hawke tugs at his wrists, forcing him to loosen his hold. He barely notices. "Kirkwall is far too dangerous for an infant."

"Then we'll just have to change Kirkwall, I guess." She ticks off her fingers briefly, thinking. "We have—oh, seven months or so to get it right."

"Seven months," Fenris says—and there is that brick-blinded look again, and when Hawke pokes him in the chest he sinks heavily back to the couch. She prods him again in the forehead with her forefinger, gently, but he does little more than bury his face in one hand and mutter something in Arcanum that she has no hope of understanding.

Ah, well, she thinks through a tightening throat. She expected this. "So there you have it. Just give me a little advance notice before you start running. I'd like to be out of the terrified-elf flight path if I can."

His head comes up at that. He stares at her a moment and blinks again (only once, this time), and fists his hands on his knees. The room is very quiet, the calm hush unbroken even by birdsong or passing voices outside the window, and when neither of them moves that same soft breeze whispers in through the open glass to trail through the ends of their hair. Then: "Hawke," he says, careful and blank and somehow so—lost. "You're truly expecting a child?"

"Yes."

His mouth works on the next word, the very thought seeming to overwhelm him. "Mine."

"Yes."

Fenris does not close his eyes this time, does not blink in stupefaction. Instead he pushes to his feet and crosses to the window, and after a minute's silent perusal of the neighbor's ivy-covered wall he turns to look at her again. "What would you have me do?" he asks, and his eyes are so shuttered she cannot read them.

She—was not expecting this, and Hawke finds herself without an answer. "What do you mean?"

"Just that." He spreads his hands between them, palm-up, empty and plaintive. "Hawke, I know—nothing of these things. Of…children. You know this."

"Oh, and I do?"

"More than I," he says evenly, though this time she hears the tremor of uncertainty in his voice—but it is more than uncertainty, deeper than that: a complete and paralyzing fear of his own ignorance.

Helplessly, she tells him, "I would have you stay."

There—the shutters crack at last, and even the sliver of terrible longing that slips through is enough to make her heart ache. "Someone else might serve you better."

"Someone else doesn't have half a baby inside me," Hawke says tartly, and when Fenris lets out a soft laugh that seems to surprise even him she follows to where he stands beneath the window. "If you want to go, then go. I won't hold you here against your will for a child you don't—care for. But if you do stay—if you want to stay, I—" She shrugs one shoulder, blinking back a sudden prickle of tears, and looks up through iron bars and glass to the clear, cloudless sky. "Well, I can't pretend I wouldn't prefer it."

"A ringing endorsement," he says drily, but the hand that finds its way to her cheek is not so steady as usual. "I told you I would remain at your side."

"Yes, well. Extenuating circumstances."

"Not so much as you believe," Fenris murmurs, bending until his forehead rests against hers. Hawke closes her eyes, breathes in, breathes out. His thumb slides over her cheekbone, over the faint lines at the corner of her eye; then his mouth presses gently to her mouth and she sighs, long and low, letting herself fold into him until his arms come around her and his strength bears up them both.

"Flames," she murmurs, and laughs against his lips. "I'm going to gain weight."

"Yes."

"And probably get very short-tempered."

"Probably."

"And crave all sorts of terrible, odd foods, and complain about my swollen ankles and my sore back and the hundred trips to the privy and all those peculiar…pregnant-y things."

"Hawke," Fenris says, pulling back until he can meet her eyes. "I will not leave you."

"So long as you know what you're promising," she whispers, and drops her forehead to his shoulder. She wants to say she is glad, and she wants to say she is happy—but this is only an hour new, only an hour since her world and Fenris's upended themselves, and in the unsettled chaotic mess of what remains Hawke cannot name her heart for happiness.

Odd relief, perhaps. Anticipation. A bare thin rind of hope.

Seven months is not enough.

—

"I am going to kill him," Hawke says flatly. "Kill him. I am going to rip off his testicles and—"

And what, she doesn't have the faintest idea, because nausea rises again like a flood and she bends over the chamber pot helplessly, cramping muscles doing their best to void a stomach already empty. Orana smoothes the hair from her forehead, her soothing murmurs meaning little behind her indulgent, poorly-hidden smile, and when Hawke at last sits back on her heels and wipes her sweating forehead Orana hands her the glass of water from her bedside table without ceremony.

"Finished for now, Mistress?"

"Until tomorrow morning," Hawke mumbles sourly, and manages all of three sips of water before her stomach rumbles ominously. She closes her eyes, presses the chilled glass to her forehead. "Skinny elf bastard."

"As you said yesterday, Mistress. And the day before that."

"And it was true then, too." She carefully twists sideways until she can lean against the side of the bed, and when she drops her head back on its rumpled coverlet Orana follows with a cool cloth to her cheeks. "You're a lifesaver, Orana."

"I spent many hours with the secluded women in Minrathous, while—while Papa and I were still there." She pulls the cloth away, turns it in her hands, replaces it. "I remember some things."

Hawke's mouth quirks, but she refuses to pry into Orana's pain so blithely, and instead she settles for briefly covering Orana's hand with her own. Then, as Orana rises and begins to straighten the bedcovers from the earlier panicked flailing for the chamberpot, Hawke asks, "Any last-minute suggestions, then?"

"Avoid becoming pregnant," Orana offers, and snaps the sheets into place.

Hawke grins. "You know, I remember you being so much less pointed with me once."

"Perhaps the child has already begun to affect your mind."

"Affect my—what? What does that mean?"

"I think I hear the door. Excuse me, Mistress."

"Orana, wait. Don't you—ooh, that elf—"

"What elf?" Fenris says, rounding the open doorway, and Hawke scowls at him from her place on the floor.

"Not you, too. I've had enough delicate condescension today already, thank you very much."

Fenris lifts an eyebrow, looks back to the hallway behind him. "Orana?"

"Oh, yes, innocent Orana, being all patient and gentle just because I keep resorting to hyperbole in my constant and repetitive complaints."

"Ah," Fenris says after a pregnant pause. "I see."

"Do you?" Hawke asks, accepting the hand he proffers to help her to her feet. She straightens her house-robe, takes one last sip from the beading glass of water. "Because I notice your timing this morning was rather fortuitous, serah."

"A happy accident," Fenris tells her dryly.

"Why, Fenris. It's almost as if you don't care for the sight of uncontrollable vomiting."

"Aveline had a question concerning the mansion. It kept me longer than I expected."

"Excuses, excuses."

"Hawke," Fenris says, catching her arm to stop her airy sailing past him. There is no teasing in his voice now. "I meant to be here."

She swallows, abruptly regretting her own mockery. "I know," she says, and when his hand slides from her elbow to twine through her fingers she leans over, rests her forehead briefly against his own. "I'd kiss you good morning, but I'm not that cruel."

Fenris snorts, brushes his lips over her cheek. "At least your tempers are short-lived."

"For the moment, anyway," Hawke agrees. "If Orana keeps looking at me like I'm a fussy mabari I might just go to the docks and throw myself right off the pier."

"You said she was familiar with these things."

"Wonderfully so, dammit. I just want to whine."

"Mabari indeed," Fenris murmurs, and the corner of his mouth curls up despite Hawke's elbow in his ribs. "Your maid's insight is remarkable."

"So will your jabbering be once I've knocked out your teeth."

"Hawke," Fenris says, smiling, sliding one hand around the nape of her neck, "come downstairs."

"Only because you've asked so nicely," she mutters, but she does not try to check her own reluctant smile as his grip tightens on her hand. "Oh, Fenris. Don't you get tired of irritable complaints?"

He blinks at her, surprised; when he realizes she is serious he shakes his head. "It has been only a week. Consider it novelty if nothing else."

"I've always wanted be a sideshow." Hawke sighs, looping a finger in Fenris's belt, tugging aimlessly to hide her embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to snap at you. Even though I'll probably do it every morning for another two months. I promise I'll try not to."

A warm, lyrium-striped finger curls under her chin, lifts her face. Fenris kisses the corner of her mouth, gently; then he says, "Make this promise to your maid."

"Bastard," she mutters without heat, but his hand is warm on her skin and warmer when it falls to the small of her back, and this time when Fenris turns towards her bedroom door Hawke does not resist. Bastard elves and their patience, putting her own irritation to shame.

He even holds her hair later while she throws up breakfast, which, all things considered, she finds rather sweet.

—

Merrill is, of course, the first of their companions besides Anders to realize it. The discovery is sheer happenstance; Hawke arrives for the evening's Wicked Grace second only to Merrill, who is always early, and when Varric rises from his place at the great table's head to offer her a drink, Hawke declines. Merrill searches Hawke's face for something she doesn't know to hide, for some simple, harmless, innocuous hint—and just like that, Merrill knots her fists at her throat and gasps.

"You're not," she says, eyes wide. Hawke blinks, realizes, flushes—and Merrill puts the tips of her fingers to her lips. "You are?"

"Are what?" Varric asks, clearly sensing the keen edge of both mystery and marketability.

Hawke sinks into her seat opposite Merrill, her cheeks aflame. "I just. Ah. It's recent."

Varric's eyes narrow, but any questions he might have posed are curtailed by Merrill's hands clapping over her mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle her excitement. Even so Hawke can hear the squeal; then Merrill bursts from her seat in an unexpectedly quick and graceful motion and circles the table to wrap Hawke in an enormous, affectionate embrace.

"When?" she asks, leaning back a brief instant only to throw her arms around Hawke again. "Does he know? Creators, when did you find out? How are you feeling? Has anyone else—have you been terribly ill?"

"No—" Hawke tries, but she is already lost. "Er—yes. Ill, I mean—and—two weeks ago? I don't—he knows, at least, and Merrill, I'm so sorry, but I can't breathe—"

"Are you—" Varric's voice cuts through them both, and Hawke looks to him, startled. "Hawke," he says, and his voice is weak and thin and, for only the second time she can remember, entirely devoid of humor. "Are you pregnant?"

"Well," she says. "Yes."

"Oh, shit," says Varric, and he falls back into his chair. They stare at each other a moment in a way that would be comical in another life; then Varric leans forward again, rubbing a gloved hand over his beardless chin as if it might clear the numb surprise from his face. "Are you really?"

"My utter inability to keep breakfast down for the last few weeks does seem to point in that general direction, yes."

"And it's—the elf's?"

"Of course it is," Hawke says, stung, and Merrill slides an arm around her waist.

Varric spreads his hands, the blank look in his eyes beginning to recede behind contrition. "You're right. Sorry, Hawke. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just—didn't expect this. You said he knows?"

"Yes. I—yes. Anders confirmed it; I told Fenris."

"Blondie," Varric mutters, eyes narrowed in half-serious pique. "Feathered double-crosser. I've seen him three times in the last few days and he never breathed a word."

Hawke shrugs as Merrill releases her at last, the both of them returning to their seats. "What can I say? The man's good at keeping secrets. Varric, we didn't want the world to know just yet."

He snorts. "I don't think humans and dwarves are that different, Hawke. We would have noticed eventually."

"Noticed what?" Isabela says, sashaying through the door with bottles of liquor in each hand, and Merrill laughs as she leans forward and says, "Hawke's going to have a baby!"

For an instant a queer, clouded look flickers through Isabela's eyes that Hawke cannot name; then it is gone as if it had never been, and Isabela plunks both bottles on the table with a broadening grin. "Are you really," she purrs, lifting an eyebrow, and at Hawke's embarrassed laugh she drops into a chair and swings both booted feet to the lip of Varric's table, crossing them at her ankles. "Well, well, well. Papa Fenris. He'll have them gutting hearts by toddling age."

There's a short, sharp gasp from the doorway followed by the heavy clink of breaking glass, and the room as a whole looks to see Aveline with both hands at her mouth, Fenris glaring over her shoulder, a shattered bottle's worth of whiskey seeping into the stained floorboards at her feet. "I will not," Fenris mutters, and Aveline takes two drunken steps into Varric's suite.

"You're not pregnant," she says, as if daring Hawke to contradict her, and while she glares Fenris sidles around both her crossed arms and the spreading amber pool of whiskey to take the open place at the table beside Hawke. "You," Aveline adds, pointing to Fenris as if just realizing he is there, "did not get Hawke pregnant while the city is trying to fall apart around our ears."

"It wasn't exactly intentional," Hawke points out, though Aveline seems little-swayed by the admittedly weak argument. Beneath the table, Fenris's fingers come to rest on the curve of her knee.

Merrill sighs fondly. "That's one of the happier accidents, don't you think? Much better than dropping a hammer on your toe."

"That is not the point—"

"Oh, bollocks," comes a new voice, and Aveline steps aside to reveal Norah scowling at the mess of whiskey and broken glass, Anders and Sebastian flanking her with identical expressions of concern and confusion. "That was one of our best bottles." She scowls down at it, wrapping her hands in cloth to guard against the glass; then she seems to sense the unusual mood of the room and looks up. "Something wrong, gents?"

Isabela tips her chair back, jabs a thumb at Hawke. "The Champion's going to be a mother before the big girl is. Does that count?"

And as Norah blinks and Anders sighs and Sebastian catches a sudden, startled breath, Hawke drops her forehead to the table and groans.

—

They do seem happy for her, though, once the initial shock wears away and Varric manages to persuade them to start the game. Aveline loses three hands in a row asking what Hawke's done to prepare for the child (not much, Hawke points out, at only ten weeks along, and Aveline's face nearly purples); Isabela outlines her ten-year-plan to groom the child for piracy before youthful rebellion settles in despite Fenris's insistence that the child wear pants; Sebastian shakes both Hawke's hand and Fenris's despite the persisting astonishment that holds him mute, though after he settles to Fenris's other side the distraction of the cards seems to help him collect his thoughts again.

Hawke even manages to win a sizeable hand for once—perhaps not unexpected considering the state of mind of the assorted players—and as she gathers in her winnings Varric lets out a wry snort. "Should've seen that one coming."

"Hawke certainly didn't," Isabela points out under her breath, grinning, and Aveline makes a noise of wordless disgust.

"Don't worry," Hawke tells Varric, ignoring them both. "I'm sure once the novelty wears off I'll go right back to pleasant mediocrity."

"Speaking of novelty," Anders says from the other end of the table as he discards, "what's this going to mean for the Champion?"

"The Champion?"

Anders gestures at Hawke with the hand holding his cards, utterly failing to notice Isabela's blatant perusal of their showing. "The Champion. You. Are you going to keep fighting?"

"Of course," Hawke says, surprised, even as Fenris says in the same moment, "No."

There is a short, tense silence broken only by the cheerful chatter drifting up from the Hanged Man's main room. Fenris looks just as startled, as if, like she, he had not even considered the point worth discussing; then his mouth twists and she sighs, dropping her hand over his when it resettles on her knee and squeezing. "Apparently we'll have to talk about this. I'll get back to you, Anders."

"All right," he says slowly, looking between them. "I only mentioned it because there are some extra precautions you should take as a fighting mage."

"That's good to know. Isn't that good to know, Fenris?"

"Hmm," he says, though he does not pull away, and folds. Another awkward silence begins to loom, prickly and pointed; then Varric changes the subject rather gracefully, asking Merrill about the new litter of kittens she'd found outside her door in the Alienage. Anders picks up the thread and Sebastian carries it, and if Aveline throws one too many thoughtful glances their way Hawke chooses to ignore them.

Fenris folds again in the next round, allowing Hawke one more victory—but any hope of triumph Hawke might have had is thoroughly stamped as, over the next two hours, he proceeds to quietly and inexorably win from her every single one of her hard-earned sovereigns. He does not relent even when her mood begins to grow dark; neither does he lift his hand from her knee, even when she flicks his knuckles after a particularly irksome loss.

At last, once the squat white candles in the center of the table have begun to sputter and spark and even the noise from the main room has begun to grow less raucous, Isabela throws down her cards and shoves back from the table with a sigh. "That's enough for me," she says to no one in particular, looking meditatively at her sizeable stack of coins; then she produces a little leather bag from nowhere and sweeps them into it in one smooth gesture before standing and—very thoroughly—stretching.

"For me as well," Sebastian says, stifling a yawn, and just like that, the night is over.

They drift apart quietly, a few soft conversations here and there barely enough to match the scraping of chairs and the clink of collected winnings. Anders reminds her to come by the clinic again sometime in the next week; Merrill gives her another hug as Aveline squeezes her shoulder tightly, and even Isabela perks up enough to slink over for a comfortable grope. "Sleep well, pet," she murmurs in Hawke's ear, for once almost entirely innocently, and then she files out after the others and with the exception of Varric, Hawke and Fenris are alone.

She is so terrible with awkward silences.

And Varric doesn't even help with it, the slippery bastard; after a moment's deliberation he levers himself up from his great chair at the head of the table, wishes them both a pleasant evening, and completely fails to hide his paternal smile as he and Bianca disappear into his private room. They hear one warm chuckle—and the door closes behind him with a click.

Hawke scowls. Then sighs, then scowls again; and when Fenris shows no inclination to do more than carefully stack her—her!—sovereigns into a neat pile before him Hawke grunts and shoves up from the table. Too much energy to sit here and stew—and so without a better idea she begins to gather the empty glasses and bottles to one side of the table, to collect the scattered and forgotten cards and slide them into their cases again.

"The barmaid will do that," Fenris says suddenly, his voice low in the room's dying candlelight.

Hawke thumps an almost-empty tankard onto the broad wooden platter at the far end of the table, splashing a dribble of ale-froth into her own eye. She purses her lips, wipes it clean, then drops the tankard to the platter again with her head turned away this time. "I'm being useful. You did that on purpose."

"I did not drink."

Hawke rolls her eyes and flicks the Angel of Death at him with two fingers. "The coin, you twit."

Fenris catches the card, places it face-up on the table beside his winking stack of gold. He studies the painted figure for a moment, touching the edge of it; then he looks up and admits, "Perhaps it was petty of me."

"Perhaps," Hawke mutters, brushing a pile of unidentifiable crumbs to the floor. She blinks down at the untidy spray of them at her feet, abruptly frustrated beyond reason—at herself, at Fenris, at this stupid mess she's made—and drops heavily into Anders's abandoned seat. Sighing, she drags her hands over her face, muffling her voice with her fingers as she asks, "Do you really want me not to fight while I'm pregnant?"

There is a long, stretching pause. She can't quite find the strength to look up, to move even her hands from her face, but when at last Fenris answers her the words are clear enough in the quiet room. "I expected you to choose that yourself."

Hawke peels her fingers from her cheeks, props her chin on her palms as she looks to Fenris with the broad expanse of the now-cleared table between them. "I can't sit idle for seven months," she says, her voice flat. "I will lose my mind."

His mouth twitches as if to keep back a comment on the state of her mind—lost or otherwise—but Fenris says only, "I would never presume to confine you against your will."

"But you have an opinion."

Fenris begins to speak, hesitates, falls silent again. Hawke sighs, frustration giving way at last to understanding, and tilts her head on her hands. "You know," she tells him, more softly than she means to, "you do get to tell me what you'd prefer. Not that I promise to bend to your every whim, but—as the man I'm in love with and the father of my child…" she shrugs, embarrassed at his expression, "your opinion is rather important to me."

Fenris swallows, a hard, knotted thing that looks almost painful; then he stands, skirting the table and sticky pool of whiskey alike with swift, quiet steps until he has both hands on her shoulders, on her jaw, holding her in place as he bends to kiss her. It is soft and gentle and tender in way that Fenris rarely shows her, and when it is over he rests his forehead against hers and murmurs, "I do not want you to fight."

"Of course not," Hawke mumbles, covering his hands with her own briefly before giving him a gentle tug. He yields, turning to lean against the lip of the table as she drops his hands; his knee presses warm against her thigh and she sighs again, lacing her fingers together at her waist. "How about this?" she says after a moment. "We'll compromise. I'll check with Anders every week, and the first time he says it's no longer safe I'll stop. No questions asked."

"Hawke."

"Fenris," she parrots, humor beginning to return. "What, don't you trust me?"

"With my life," he says without hesitation, but his jaw tenses. "With your own safety…I am not always convinced."

"How diplomatically said." Hawke quirks an eyebrow. "But it's not just my own safety anymore. I know that."

Fenris lets out a short, shallow breath, lips pinching together, but when his gaze flicks away from hers Hawke knows his irritated glances well enough to recognize it for acquiescence. She rises herself, an irrepressible smile tugging at her lips, and lets the fingertips of one hand come to rest on the smooth-polished table at Fenris's hip. He glances at her hand and then at her, one black eyebrow lifting in silent challenge, and Hawke slides her other hand to the wooden surface at his other side, effectively caging him against the table's edge.

"You aren't going to stay angry, are you?" she murmurs, her lips brushing, just barely, over the lyrium curving down his chin.

His hands lift to her waist, slip to press against the small of her back, to pull her more closely against him. "How long will you hold the coin against me?"

"I haven't decided yet," she tells him, and when he kisses her she does not try to keep back her low laugh.

They remain like this for several minutes, neither of them eager to break this unexpected moment of contentment, but just as Hawke begins to nudge her foot between Fenris's and Fenris's own grip begins to drift lower than her waist, Varric's door rattles with an almighty thumping crash, as if an enormous, dwarven-made boot has been thrown into it with full strength.

"No sex on my table!" Varric shouts, clear even through the wood and iron, and as Fenris stiffens like an iron poker Hawke throws back her head in laughter.

"I can think of better places anyway," she tells Fenris, dropping one last kiss on his nose at his reluctant smile; then she grips his hand in the last light of the melted white candles and, after a brief pause for Fenris to gather his ill-gotten gains into a pouch on his belt, they set off together into the night.

—

(It is nearly too much for him, he admits to her one night. He cannot believe he is granted these things.

So long as it's nearly, Hawke tells him, and holds his hand a little tighter.)

—

"I have a bump!"

"What?" Aveline shouts, ducking under a greatsword whistling over her head.

Hawke flattens her hand over her stomach for an instant, then swivels on her heel to blast a half-dozen solid spears of ice through the mercenary who'd been sneaking up on her. "A baby bump!" she calls over her shoulder, and smashes the bladed end of her staff across the mercenary's forehead. "I saw it this morning in the mirror!"

Aveline wallops the greatsword's owner in the face with her shield, following it with a quick thrust of her longsword through the woman's stomach. Blood sprays off the end of the blade as she yanks it free, hopping a few steps backwards towards Hawke, and Aveline's grimace flickers oddly in the sudden burst of orange flame spraying from Hawke's fingers at a pair of archers above them. "That happens, I hear," she says. "Anders, down!"

Across the square, Anders throws himself to his knees—and where his head had been two bolts thud into the assassin's throat in quick succession. She clutches at her collar, gasping wetly, and falls. "Thanks," Anders says, swallowing air as he pushes back to his feet, and Hawke glances up to the top of the Lowtown stairs behind her in time to see Varric grin.

"No problem, Blondie! Bianca, you're beautiful." Hawke hears the twang-ratchet-twang of two more bolts flying unerringly to their marks, and then Varric's voice drifts down to her through the clear morning air. "What was that about baby bumps?"

"I have one!" Hawke starts, but before she can finish a lithe, lightly-armored man flips a pair of daggers around his fingers as he darts towards Hawke, neatly dodging a pile of rubble fallen from the moldering wall. She takes two quick steps backward, staff raised—and her heel catches on a half-melted ice spear to stagger her. White teeth flash in a dangerous grin as Hawke's arms windmill frantically and the flat of one blade catches the morning sunlight in a keen flash; even as he flits towards her between the wall-cast shadows she manages to get one hand to her forehead and she pushes—

—and he goes flying backwards into the middle of the square, daggers catching in quick flaring arcs of light as they spin free of his grip.

"Got one for you, Aveline," Hawke calls, shoving away from where she has half-fallen against the wall.

"A little busy here, Hawke!" Aveline grits out, shield straining against the full weight of the overgrown warrior bearing down on her with a greataxe.

"Come on! He's literally under your—never mind." Hawke jogs forward, flinging a careful fireball towards the blood mage facing off against Anders; when she reaches the groaning figure at Aveline's heels, she very precisely drives the end of her staff through his heart. "Anyway," she tells Aveline, absently touching a golden twist of rejuvenation to the back of Aveline's sweating neck, "I think I'm over the worst of the morning sickness. Now it's just the constant ache in my breasts and the fact that I can't ever get enough sleep that's giving me trouble."

Aveline grunts, throws off the man in full plate. "Your breasts are sore?"

"Like someone's run them over with a haycart. All the time."

"They haven't changed so far as I've noticed," Aveline says, rolling her head on her shoulders and shifting her weight to her toes as the warrior braces for another charge. "Do all your clothes still fit?"

"If anything, they're tighter around the waist." Hawke leans around her, clenching a fist, and yanks the man ten feet into the air before slamming him to the ground again in a clanking metal cacophony. "For as sore as my breasts are, it's not exactly what I was expecting."

"That's normal," Anders calls, offing his blood mage at last with a brilliant flourish of flame-white magic. "Honestly, it might get a little worse before it gets better."

"Would – you," the warrior growls, clambering gracelessly to his feet, "shut – up?"

"Rude," Hawke says, frowning, and sets the man's cloth undershirt on fire. "It's not like I know what I'm doing here."

He lets out an enraged, maddened snarl, whirling the greataxe in air-splitting circles between them as sparks jump from his smoldering shirt to his beard; smoke billows from the eyeslits of his helmet and with a roar, he tears it off one-handed. "Stop talking and fight!"

And almost before he finishes the sentence, fire and lightning swarm up his legs in a glittering storm and a silver bolt drives square between his eyes.

"Good shot, Varric!" Hawke says with a salute to where Varric grins at the top of the stairs, lowering her smoking staff to her side. Anders does the same as he approaches, waving stray flickers of electricity out of the air around him, and slowly, like a particularly dense oak, the man topples backwards to the Lowtown cobbles with a crash.

"I hate every one of you," Aveline mutters, sheathing her longsword, and Hawke drapes one arm over her shoulder.

"We'll get you something ranged one of these days, I promise."

"Oh, shut up."

"Speaking of promises," Anders says, glowing with blue-white healing magic as he brushes his fingers over their various scrapes and bruises, "have you been using that tincture I gave you?"

"Yes, Anders, and it is foul. I almost think I'd rather let this little parasite go about exposed to every scrap of sundry magic in this city than keep mixing that poison into my breakfast."

Varric finally reaches them in the center of the square, Bianca slung into place on his back. "You don't mean that."

"Of course not," Hawke sighs, and kneels to rifle through the enormous warrior's pockets. "And it's not like Fenris wouldn't sneak it in there anyway if I tried to quit. Here's another pouch of pebbles, if anyone wants it."

Aveline shakes her head. "Pass, though we should sell that axe. How's Fenris taking you being out here, anyway? You told me he was hovering."

"Better than he was. I think bringing him along on those nice simple spider-murdering trips to the Coast helped him to relax a little."

Anders snorts. "What a relief."

"Oh, stop it." Hawke puts her hands on her knees and pushes to her feet, waving the one half-valuable scrap of paper from the dead man's pockets. "And we've got a hideout location. Who's up for wholesale slaughter?"

"Can it wait until tomorrow?" Varric asks, glancing at the sun. "I'm leading a workshop at the Hanged Man in an hour."

"I suppose I'd prefer that too," Hawke admits, realizing all at once that her back aches, that her knees ache, and that her breasts feel like they're about to fall off her chest. "Everyone else all right with a day's delay?"

Anders nods; Aveline shrugs. "Fine with me."

"All right, then. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh," she adds, snagging Aveline's elbow as Varric and Anders set off towards the Hanged Man, chatting amiably. "Can I ask you something?"

Aveline shoves a bit of blood-caked hair back into her headband. "Of course, Hawke."

"You, um. Offered me something? A few weeks ago. I don't know if you remember. I thought maybe, since our afternoon has opened up, if you weren't too busy…"

"You want me to help you and Fenris pick out baby things?"

"Only if you don't mind!" Hawke blurts, digging one booted toe into the cobblestones. "I'd do it myself if I had the slightest idea of what to get besides the obvious, and you said Donnic practically raised his younger brothers."

"I don't mind at all," Aveline tells her warmly, thumbing the stray bit of hair out of her eyes again. "Just…let me go have a bath, all right?"

"Of course. Fenris and I will meet you at your place in an hour, then, if that works for you."

"It does," Aveline says, and they set off for Hightown, the morning sun winking cheerfully on the enormous greataxe that Hawke drags behind her.