Of Cleanliness and Godhood

Chapter One

He wasn't home. That was a good thing.

For whatever reason, Isabela had been, however, and she'd burst into a fit of tinkling, amused laughter when Hawke showed up to Fenris's home with her buckets and brooms. And Isabela would've stayed, too, had Hawke not frog-marched the pirate towards the door and made her leave. Isabela kissed Hawke on the cheek in farewell and patted her bottom with a wink before telling her "Good luck, then." The pirate was still laughing at Hawke's get-up as she sauntered away, dark curves incongruous and eye-popping amidst the ivy and mansions that quiet morning in Hightown.

Once alone, Hawke nudged the door closed with her hip and let all the cleaning supplies clatter to the floor. She took a deep breath and surveyed the task.

The stone mansion Fenris lived in hadn't been clean since...since before they'd slaughtered the previous occupants. Remains of those slavers and mercenaries who'd been hunting Fenris still decorated flagstones.

But. That had been over five years ago.

The place was choked with dust, especially the rooms downstairs that were never used-Fenris typically haunted the master bedroom upstairs. He left mostly to raid the wine cellar, it seemed. The walls were cracked, spiderwebs crowded every corner, and the stone floor was worn; tiles broken and chipped, and coated with grit. Hawke couldn't fix the cracks in the walls or the broken stones, but Andraste's tits, at least she could clean.

There was a small part of her that was very much hoping to please Fenris with her efforts, but she didn't want to linger on her unrequited bloody pining overlong. They were friends. Just friends. And friends do nice things for friends. Friends clean other friends' filthy fucking houses whenfriends are former slaves with hang-ups about housecleaning.

Right?

"Right," she decided, lying to herself and reaching for a broom. She began to sweep the floors. The foyer was quick work but the main room it led to proved a more difficult challenge-literal piles of dust. She nudged skeletons with her toes, and performed her noises of disgust for an audience of unappreciative spiders when the skeletons rattled and fell apart. The clacking dry bones were taken out to the refuse heap in the back alley, their final resting place amidst stinking feces and rotten meat. Fitting company for slavers, really.

Hawke used the broom to swat down some of the lower spiderwebs, too. The ceilings were vaulted in the main room so some of the more enterprising arachnids would likely live up there, forever, but the ones stupid enough to set camp at broom-height were getting unceremoniously swept and squished. She thought about the way Fenris had once said, "I like the spiders. They eat the flies," and she'd bitten her tongue from snapping, "Yes well you wouldn't have flies if you cleaned every once in awhile, now would you?"

She swept the stairs. The carpet had grown ragged and thin on the smooth stone steps, and with each swish of the broom she brushed loose more threads, which didn't approve the appearance overmuch. She frowned at that.

Once all the dust had been cleared from the floors, she navigated through the kitchens to the water pump out by the back entrance and began filling buckets with cold, fresh water. This would be the worst part. This was always her least favorite chore-Hawke hated mopping floors.

She lugged heavy, dripping buckets back to the main room and set them down with a slight slosh. She hummed a little, to try and make herself enjoy the hated task a bit more, but the room was too cavernous and Hawke didn't enjoy the sound of her own voice enough to want it echoing and occupying so much empty space around her.

She did not think about whose voice she wanted to echo in that room. She did not.

She grumbled, frustrated, when the mop was too soft-it moved some of the grime around, granted, so she could just paint clean one giant penis on the floor and leave it at that-but she and Fenris weren't exactly on "practical joke penis" terms, and he'd react poorly. The mop swirled around grime, but it was too soft for getting up any of the black grit stuck steadfast to the stones.