Archive of Our Own

[A/N: Damn I love these sorts of prompts. :( Since there's already a great minifill it won't be adding to the fill ratio, but... fantastic prompt! Postgame.]

On a scale of one to ten, one being 'mildly horrible' and ten being 'nightmarish', waking up on a stone sacrificial altar would probably rate a seven.

If this didn't show how disturbed his life had become ever since he'd met the Warden-Commander, Anders wouldn't know what would. Sitting up sharply, he had to grab at the cold stone edges to steady himself as a bout of dizziness hit him.

“Are you feeling all right?”

Blinking, Anders wasn't entirely sure if this was one of his stranger dreams, but he was fairly sure that he hadn't had copious amounts of cheese or wine before sleeping. He was surrounded by a group of oddly dressed strangers: a tall, vaguely familiar-looking, sun-browned woman with lurid gold jewelry around her neck and ears and a scandalously short tunic over her low-cut corset, a Dalish elf, the one who had spoken, slender and lithe, by her feathers-and-homespun get-up likely some sort of Keeper or Keeper-in-training, and a strikingly handsome man, his strong jaw edged by a trimmed beard, tousled hair so dark as to almost be black, his eyes an arresting, raptor's shade of amber brown. The man was dressed oddly – a wolf fur lay on black, spiked armor plates over richly patterned, red and gray fabric. In his right gauntleted hand the stranger held a bladed staff, and from this distance, he exuded an air of confident command that was electric.

“I'm somehow unsurprised to realize that whatever just happened, there was a Dalish female at the bottom of it,” Anders decided to resort to charm. “I mean, no offence meant, but my experience with Dalish women of the Keeper variety has tended to be wildly uncomfortable. What just happened? Do I know you?”

The Keeper blinked at him, wide-eyed, and there was a sharp intake of breath from the man in the wolf's fur. “Anders,” the man spoke, tight with tension. “That is not amusing.”

“What isn't? You'll have to specify,” Anders said warily, carefully gathering his strength in case he had to lash out with spells. “The bit where I'm wearing clothes that I don't remember dressing in? Or the weird elvhen ritual chamber? Or the part where the last thing I remember before waking up here was walking towards the market in Amaranthine?”

“Merrill,” the man in the wolf's fur said sharply. “What happened?”

“It worked.” Merrill, the Dalish Keeper, said, frowning at Anders. “The spirit's gone. Just as the ritual said.”

“But everything else from the day he met the spirit went with it?” The tanned woman pursed her lips, her expressive eyes dancing with a sort of sympathetic humor. “Well, that's... interesting.”

“It's convenient, is what it is,” the man in the wolf's fur spat, and stalked away angrily, up the arching, crumbling stairway choked with moss and vines towards the dim square of light beyond.

Anders stared blankly at the women. “What did I say?”

“All the wrong things, Sparkly. As usual,” the tanned woman grinned. “I can't believe that you don't remember me, though. We've got a little bit of old history between us, don't we? My name's Isabela.”

“Isabela. Isabela. The Pearl,” Anders recalled in a flash. “Ah... yes... I remember... now...”

“Maker, you look like you swallowed a rat,” Isabela laughed, slapping him roughly on the shoulder. “No, don't apologize, I had fun. Come on. Let's get you back on the ship. Maybe you'll feel better after you've had a lie down. Hawke will come back when he's blown off some steam.”

“Hawke?” So that angry, if handsome man was called Hawke.

“You don't remember him at all? You poor bastard,” Isabela said, with a quick shake of her head, and trotted away to the stairs. About to slip off the altar, Anders paused when he felt a quick, light touch on his wrist.

“I'm so sorry, Anders,” Merrill said earnestly, looking guilty. “I had no idea that this would happen.”

“Merrill, was it?” Anders took a deep, long breath. “Now, before I set something on fire, would you please, for the love of the Maker, explain what just happened to me. And possibly get me back to Amaranthine before the Warden-Commander realizes that I've gone missing on him. He's a bloody stickler for schedule and he can be vindictive like you can't believe.”

“It's... it's going to take a lot of telling,” Merrill said, with a nervous smile that slid quickly off her lips as her eyes darted away. “And I don't know if I should really be the one to do it. Maybe if you lie down everything will just come back to you.”

“Where are we right now? Please?” Anders struggled to keep a grip on his patience as he slipped off the altar, and instantly stumbled, muttering an oath as he had to lean against the stone block. His legs still felt stiff and weak, and now that he was concentrating, the air seemed static and thick with arcane residue. There was a freshly cracked bowl at the foot of the altar, some sort of bluish fluid having dried to a thin residue, and the chamber smelled strongly of incense and sandalwood.

“Llomerynn. The Dalish here keep better records about elvhen history and its old rituals.” Merrill was edging towards the stairway. “I need to speak to the Keeper. Why don't you get back to the ship and have a lie down like Isabela said?”

“What ship? Why won't you simply explain?” Anders closed his eyes briefly, and took another deep breath. “I promise that if I start setting things on fire, I'll give you fair warning.”

“You can see the ship once you get out of the cave, it's the one with the pretty white and red sails and the black flag, called the Siren's Blade.” Merrill was fumbling in one of the pouches at her waist. “And, um, Aveline gave me one of her mirrors for good luck... here.” She pushed a small, round mirror into his hands. “You'll understand.”

The Probable-Keeper left hurriedly, which turned out to be a good thing; about five horrified minutes after he'd looked into the mirror, Anders had set the vines on the wall of the chamber on fire.

The cave was set in a face of a grassy hill on the edge of a forest, and looked down over towards a slender ribbon of white sand lined by the wide blue sea, the afternoon sun warm and inviting, the faint shouts of the sailors at the beach interspersed by the cries of gulls circling above. The Siren's Blade was anchored offshore, and although the crew on the shore that had been loading crates of supplies onto a couple of small boats said nothing when he asked to be taken on board, they eyed him warily, as though he was a grenade that was about to explode at any moment. Unnerved by their attitude, Anders attempted to make light conversation a couple of times as he was rowed towards the ship, but the sailors pointedly ignored him.

Once below decks, Anders found that he couldn't quite figure out which cabin was usable, and after an awkward query to a passing sailor, was curtly shown to one close to the galley. Once inside, Anders was sure that the sailor had made a mistake – this cabin was clearly someone's. Papers were pinned down at a bolted desk, and there was a stack of books in an open chest.

Then Anders noticed a familiar, somewhat more battered looking chest tucked in a corner under the bunk, and dragged it out, running his hands over its pitted surface. Inside it were instantly recognisable items – a scrap of green leather, the dye long faded, the silver cat's bell on it tarnished gray; a few old, well-worn books, including the leather-bound copy of scripture that the Warden-Commander had given him, and beneath it all, his mother's pillow.

Creepy.

Anders sat down heavily on the floor, blinking, as the incomprehensible conclusion that he had shunted away hurriedly to the back of his mind in the ruin started to nag at him again.

The mirror had shown him his face, but an older version, harder around the edges of his eyes, paler and grim, worry lines edging over his forehead, and if he removed his weird, feathery dark coat Anders was sure that he'd see some scars that he'd never remember having. This was evidently his cabin, and Isabela and the others had expressed shock when he didn't seem to remember them.

It was with a sinking feeling that he conceded that (a) either this was a very poor practical joke, or (b) he was in the Fade, which didn't seem to be the case if he concentrated, (c) he was finally going bonkers from the darkspawn taint, or (d) he had somehow lost a large chunk of his memory. Oh, and (e) he had probably volunteered for the magical experiment for the sheer hell of it, whatever it had been, knowing himself.

On the bright side, it meant that he probably wasn't late for any appointment with the Warden-Commander and as such likely was not about to be castrated in the near future. Cheered by this thought, Anders closed the chest, toed it back under the bunk, and decided to investigate his cabin for Clues.

The papers on the desk were partially in his hand, and evidently had been written when he was intoxicated on some Oghren-strength liquor. Anders puzzled over the strange ranting contents for a long moment, shook his head slowly, and folded them back under the weight. There were other papers stacked with his drunken ramblings, in another, spidery hand, in the form of copious notes about artifacts accompanied by fairly good sketches. The other chests contained items that also did not belong to him – a maroon jacket that was a little too short at the sleeves, other books in the spidery hand, a portrait of a beautiful woman with kindly eyes, an old, cracked necklace of beads, and other odd personal effects that Anders and his curiosity didn't particularly feel guilty going through.

Still, they didn't provide any real insight to his current circumstances, and with a deep sigh, Anders pulled off his boots, stowed them under the bunk, draped his jacket on the bolted chair, and settled into the bunk.

It smelled of himself and... someone else... and Anders couldn't quite put his finger on the scent, warm and masculine and with the faintest hint of fire and lightning. Queuing the additional mystery in the whole list of the entirety of what had evidently been a bad day, even if he didn't quite remember it, Anders allowed the gentle rocking of the ship to lull him into sleep.

He woke up sharply when someone entered the cabin, scrambling up into a sitting position. Sailors were ambling in, picking up the chests that weren't his, and filing out. “Wait!”

“You have a problem, bring it up with the cap'n,” grunted Unsavory Specimen 'A', and the chests were whisked away. Vaguely outraged, Anders pulled on his boots hurriedly and followed the sailors out of the cabin, but they ignored him as they loaded the chests into a separate, empty cabin and dispersed without any word to him.

Disconcerted, Anders padded over to what looked like the captain's cabin: a closed door at the stern of the ship that looked like it led to the largest cabin, with a gold-hilted dagger sunk deep into the wood. Before he could knock, however, he hesitated at the sound of muffled voices.

“... no. No more rituals, Merrill. Andraste knows, in a way, this was a stroke of luck.” That was Hawke's voice, in a flat tone of command. “For everyone involved. We'll drop him off at whatever port close by that he wants to get to, and that will be the end of the matter.”

“I can't let you do this,” Merrill retorted, if pleadingly. “What if someone comes after him? After what he's done, he won't be safe in any-”

“We'll drop him in Rivain or Tevinter.” Hawke interjected. “I've made up my mind.”

“Who died and made you Cap'n?” Isabela drawled, though there was no real bite to her words. “If I lost my memory, I'd sure have wanted someone to remind me.”

“Because of all the buried treasure?” The edge to Hawke's tone faded grudgingly into wry humor.

“If I had buried treasure would I have spent the last six years or so skulking in the Hanged Man?”

“I think you would have skulked in the Hanged Man no matter how much money you truly had, Isabela.” Hawke retorted, and this seemed to be an old argument, between old friends, or something more. Dimly, Anders felt a faint sense of disappointment. Hawke was a very fine figure of a man; had Anders encountered him on the street in Amaranthine, he would probably have tried to flirt with him on the spot, out of principle if nothing else.

“For all you know, Sparkly might have woken up and remembered everything.”

“He won't. Not from what Merrill is saying.” Hawke said, with a deep sigh. “After all that has happened... Maker, but some people must be born lucky. No one deserves a second chance like this.”

“You don't mean that,” Merrill said earnestly. “You and Anders-”

“Don't say it, Merrill,” Hawke interrupted wearily. “I'm going topside for some air. Just let things lie. It's far kinder this way. Even if he doesn't deserve it.”

Anders had to backpedal hastily as the door was jerked open. Hawke frowned at him, as though about to demand how long he'd been eavesdropping, then his lip curled into a silent snarl, and he pushed roughly past him, storming off towards the stairs leading above decks. Inside the captain's cabin, Isabela and Merril sat around an antique desk that had been bolted down and covered with maps, books, bottles of rum and a bronze compass and sextant. The cabin was richly furnished in shades of maroon and gold, with statues, veiled paintings, sheathed weapons and other items of evident loot settled in a chaos of color and luxury.

“Sparkly. Do you remember what I said to you yesterday?” Isabela smiled.

“No. Please feel free to enlighten me,” Anders pulled up Hawke's vacated seat at the desk. “I have one burning question. Is this all a cheese-fueled dream, or am I truly older?”

“Older,” Merrill murmured, her eyes fixed on the table.

“How much older?”

“About six or seven years,” Isabela said brightly, “But you don't look a day over twenty-five winters.”

“Six or seven years?” Anders yelped incredulously. “Andraste's flaming knickers! And I volunteered for whatever it was that happened, didn't I. I did.” Anders moaned, when Merrill nodded mutely. “Where's my cat?”

“You'd left it in Amaranthine, then you quit being a Gray Warden,” Isabela supplied.

“I quit being a...? I did not. The Warden-Commander would kill me.” Anders blinked slowly. “Maker save me. I did quit, didn't I. Over a cat. It just does sound like something I would have done. Why am I not dead?”

“Sometimes I wonder myself,” Isabela grinned slyly. “So. Where to, Sparkly? The world's your oyster. I'll recommend Rivain, myself, but I may be biased.”

“I'm not leaving until I get to the bottom of what happened,” Anders said firmly. “What magical experiment did I agree to get involved with? And Andraste's name, what was all that doom and gloom about? What did I manage to get up to? You can tell me. I'll try to look surprised. Did I set something important on fire? Piss off someone important? Start a second Blight?”

“Not sure about the latter, but I wouldn't have put it beyond you somehow.” Isabela drawled, slouching back in her chair. “Sorry, Sparkly. Hawke's orders. Either it comes back to you, or it doesn't. But please tell me that you remember how to cast healing spells and set broken bones.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well then, feel free to stick around,” Isabela spread her palms wide, and rolled to her feet. “I'm going topside to make sure Hawke doesn't burn anything down.”

“You only want me around for the free healing?” Anders asked, with a mock expression of hurt.

“It certainly wasn't for all your moaning about templars and mages,” Isabela shot back, with a playful salute, and sauntered out of the cabin.

“Um,” Merrill said, into the awkward silence that followed. “I think I should go.”

“Merrill, please tell me what happened to me.”

“Hawke's orders,” Merrill repeated Isabela's words, if a little apologetically. “But you do look better. Not like a wind up doll that'd gotten all broken.”

“Merrill, please.”

“What are your views on blood mages?” Merrill asked, in an odd non-sequitur, and when he frowned, she added, “Just tell me.”

“For the most part, dangerous. But there are milder versions, and mages with a strong enough will can control it. They don't all become abominations, but it's a reckless form of magic even in its milder forms. Why?”

“You're not the Anders I know,” Merrill said soberly, reaching out to touch her fingers lightly to his shoulder, as though in comfort. “Maybe Hawke is right. He usually is. Try talking to him.”

“While he bites my head off?” Hawke hadn't seemed to like him very much. It was nice to see that some things never changed. Anders had never before failed to deeply exasperate anyone whom he was even remotely attracted to.

“Give him time.”

The Siren's Blade was a fairly decently sized pirate ship; a smart, sleek galleon built for speed and offensive capabilities, its hull filled with suspect cargo and its equally suspect crew dressed in equal parts rum, motley clothes and sharp implements. Anders had never been part of the crew on a pirate ship before – at least, not that he recalled – and he would normally have found it an exhilarating experience.

Now, however, with everyone, including evidently hardened pirates, edging carefully around him or straight off ignoring him altogether, it was simply unnerving. The temptation to leap out at the unsuspecting just to see if they would jump ship warred with the faint, unpleasant notion that whatever he had done this time that he had forgotten, it had been far beyond all his usual antics as an established Circle-escapee troublemaker.

Talking to Hawke turned out far more difficult than Anders imagined. The ship was circling back to Llomerynn city for repairs and resupply before heading for Rivain, and despite the weather being pleasant for sailing, Hawke was usually nowhere to be found or perched improbably high up on the rigging, looking out over the horizon behind them, as though he was searching for something.

As it turned out, Anders was only able to speak to Hawke when they had docked at what looked like the Raiders' end of Llomerynn harbor, flanked by equally suspicious-looking sleek, well-armed ships with black flags, out of immediate view from the city, the harbor stinking of dried and dying fish, bilgewater and floating rubbish. Delightful. Looking longingly at the dim outline of the city before him, Anders had tried to follow Merrill and Isabela as they were disembarking, and found himself dragged away from the line of sailors and pulled bodily behind the mainmast before he could protest.

“You're staying on board. Below decks,” Hawke said curtly, as Anders rubbed his wrist, grimacing. For a mage, Hawke had an iron grip. “Go.”

“Why?” Anders demanded, incredulous. “That's not fair! We've been days aboard ship, and there're only so many rats I can count before I begin repeating myself. I'm going to start climbing the mainmast at this rate.”

Hawke looked unconvinced. “We can't take the chance that someone might recognise you. No templars in Llomerynn, but there are a lot of Antivans. Including the Crows. Below decks. Now.”

“Make me,” Anders folded his arms defiantly. “Somewhere in that city there's a hot bath with my name on it.”

“You don't have money,” Hawke pointed out.

“That's never been a problem before.” A nice smile and some pretty words tended to go a long way. “A trade city like this will definitely have more than a few lonely ladies.”

Hawke narrowed his eyes, his jaw twitching, and suddenly Anders could smell fire and lightning, in a warm, thrilling static over his skin, like the uneven stillness before the wild fury of a thunderstorm. Wide-eyed, Anders gathered his own power, ready to shield himself at a moment's necessity, then abruptly the crackling aura of power was gone, as Hawke closed his eyes and clenched his fists tightly. “Do whatever you wish,” he said, in an even voice that sounded all the more deadly for its sudden calm, and stalked away towards the gangplank.

Fire and lightning. The bunk in 'his' cabin. Revelation felt like a blow in his gut, knocking him off kilter, and Anders leaned heavily against the mainmast as he watched Hawke disembark from the ship to the harbor without even looking back, punch drunk with equal parts sheer astonishment and a hollow sense of uncertain regret. Shaken, and feeling like the biggest heel in Thedas, Anders slunk away below decks, to his cabin, and dug out one of the books from his chest.
He didn't remember reading this one before – the Tale of the Black Fox - though it did seem well-loved: the spine was tattered, and the pages yellowed and dog-eared. Settling on the bunk, Anders opened the book to the first page, but found that he couldn't concentrate on the text; his mind was rife with questions.

Who was Hawke to him, exactly? And what had Anders done?

“Andraste's knickers,” Anders muttered fervently to himself. Come to think of it, he wouldn't be entirely surprised if someone had told him that he had started a second Blight. Fell over the wrong stone in the Deep Roads, perhaps. Or picked up some sort of artifact that he shouldn't have.

He didn't know how long he simply sat, staring at the first page of the book, only looking up sharply at a polite knock on the door. “Hawke?”

The cabin door opened a fraction, to show an anxious looking Merrill. “Oh, here you are.”

“I'm not allowed off the ship, apparently. I'm going to starve,” Anders said plaintively. “And go stir-crazy. And it feels like I probably haven't had a decent bath in at least a week. I'm going to start crawling out of my own skin. I have itches in places that I never knew could itch.”

“Hawke is so silly sometimes,” Merrill said, relaxing visibly. “I'll get you something to eat.”

“I think I made him angry by accident.” Anders admitted. “But I do – I mean, I used to do that on a fairly regular basis to people who got to know me. I'm not sure if that's different.”

“I know. That much didn't really change. But he'll get over it, I think.” Merrill's lips pulled up into a tentative smile. “Suledin. I will be back shortly.”

“Where's Hawke?” Anders asked, squaring his shoulders. Even if he didn't actually remember anything, he supposed that the right thing to do would be to apologize. Or attempt to. “I should speak with him.”

“Being silly, like I said,” the Dalish elf said wryly. “He's drinking in one of those taverns that Isabela likes, and in quite a terrible temper, so he's just going to be very sick and grumpy tomorrow. You'll think that you shemlen would learn at some point.”

Maker help him, but if he wasn't feeling particularly guilty before, he was now – and it wasn't even fair. “Can you take me to him?”

“It isn't a good idea right now. He's been like this before,” Merrill said thoughtfully. “Isabela's watching him in case he starts on the fireballs. He'll be fine after a couple of days.”

Anders let out an explosive breath, frustrated. “This wouldn't have happened if someone had just given me even a short, concise summary on the last six years. I mean, I'm not looking for an essay with citations and footnotes. Even a quick one, around the lines of who I'd pissed off or set fire to, and who I had obviously been, sweet Andraste, sharing a bunk with? I'm happy with short and concise.”

“You don't know him any more. We don't know you any more,” Merrill's tone was gentle, but sharply direct. “I might not see things the way lethallin does all the time, but I try to understand his point of view. He has his reasons.”

“For withholding my own memories from me?”

“You once told Isabela that you used to be selfish,” Merrill said quietly. “I think I see what you meant.”

When the door closed, it wasn't with a slam but with a reproachful click, leaving him to slump back on the bunk with another, deep sigh. And to think that things had seemed tense when he was with the Wardens. This was rather like navigating a minefield hopping, blindfolded and deafened by random blasts of folk music. Sooner or later, something was going to go spectacularly awry.

Merrill brought him something deplorably vegetarian and unidentifiable, but at that point Anders was hungry enough to eat his own boots if he really had to. He tried to thank her, but she shook her head at him and left the cabin, leaving Anders to chalk yet another person up to his List of People He'd Recently Pissed Off. To whit – an entire ship of pirates (unknown), Dalish female Keeper (danger) and evidently powerful (ex?) lover. Give or take another day or so, he'd probably manage to even add the ever-ebullient Isabela to the list.

In another week, perhaps the rats would jump ship to avoid him.

In a souring mood, Anders abandoned his attempt to understand exactly why the Black Fox seemed to always inevitably steal his way into the bedrooms of rich and lonely women, and prowled around the ship, inspecting the gunports and the cargo hold. Whatever Isabela was smuggling, the crates were sealed tight and unmarked, and the skeleton crew posted on watchdog duty shot him dirty looks when he tried to get close.

Eventually, he'd explored every accessible nook and cranny of the mostly empty galleon, and returned to his cabin, no less bored than before, and stared out of the porthole, biting down a deep sigh. He couldn't see far, only to the next moored galleon of an equally suspicious nature, and the gentle up and down of the waves was, against all odds, beginning to make him feel vaguely queasy where sailing along the coast through choppy weather hadn't.

Things weren't a total bust, Anders had to admit. He might have managed to irrevocably ruin a few friendships – and a relationship, apparently – without even really remembering how he had done it, but at the very worst, it did look like he had the chance to start over. He'd ask Isabela to put him to port at Seere, perhaps, and then make his own way, like he normally did. Seere had a large concentration of Rivaini witches, according to the few Templar reports he'd managed to steal when he was still in the Circle, so it was probably mage friendly by default.

From Seere he might be able to get word to the Warden-Commander via the warden outpost, assuming that he still lived and operated as Ferelden's seneschal. The Warden-Commander had a naturally nosy temperament, even for a fellow mage, that meant that if Anders had truly done something utterly spectacular, damage wise, the Warden-Commander would likely be able to shed light on it.

And whatever Merrill had been worried about, it wasn't as though Anders wasn't used to spending his life on the run. He knew how and where to hide, and with his phylactery destroyed, he could simply melt away into any major city and no one would be any the wiser. If it was really necessary, he would try and rejoin the Wardens, as much as he hated the Deep Roads.

Besides, he wasn't being selfish. His presence seemed to be creating strife, for whatever reason, and he couldn't see head or tail of the matter. As always, Anders' default reaction to an unsolvable problem was to try and run away and ignore it. It usually worked. Falling in with the Gray Wardens and being dragged through the most miserable places in Thedas aside. The Warden-Commander had a knack of throwing a wrench in everyone's best-laid plans, even those of an Archdemon-

Laughter interspersed by slurred, muttered curses interrupted his train of thought. Anders peeked out of the cabin door in time to see Isabela and one of the other pirates dragging Hawke to his new cabin, the mage slumped and dead-weight between them, an arm over their shoulders, none of them particularly steady on their feet as Isabela managed to kick the cabin door open on a second try, and they disappeared into the room, probably to pour Hawke into the bunk.

Moments later, Isabela and the pirate emerged, and even as he staggered back up topside, Isabela caught sight of Anders and grinned, waving tipsily at him and sauntering in a weaving, precarious route over towards him. “Merrill said you've been... you've been good.”

“Is he all right?”

“Little too much to drink? The Champion can't hold his whi...wh...whisky,” Isabela giggled, then hiccuped. “Oops. But no fireballs this time. I watched.”

Anders had to take a reflexive step back as Isabela leaned heavily against the doorframe and belched. “Maker, you smell like you washed in a brewery!”

“I might have,” Isabela said, with a sly, drunken grin. “That sounds fun. Might as well rob a few more while... while we're on the topic of breweries. Going to be a long, longlong trip to Rivain.”

“We're going to Rivain?”

“Have to drop you off somewhere, Sparkly,” Isabela said, with a vague and uncoordinated gesture at his porthole. “Bad for m... mor...morale.”

That was a relief, actually. And a nice coincidence. “I'll like to go to Seere.”

“Seere's boring,” Isabela whined, stumbling a little and giggling again. “Never a good place to drink.”

“Well, you've had quite enough to drink, captain,” Anders said firmly, pulling Isabela's arm over his shoulders and frogmarching her towards her cabin as she leaned heavily against him and hiccuped again.

“Ooh. You're being naughty,” Isabela tapped the side of her nose – or tried to – her finger actually nearly poked Anders in the eye. “Hawke's the possessive type. He'll skin me if he finds out.”

“I realized.” Anders observed wryly, fumbling the catch to the captain's cabin. “And while I usually have no objections to being 'naughty', I'm a little more concerned about the bit where I might get struck by chain lightning. I'm just going to tuck you in.”

“So that's what they call it in the Circle?” Isabela laughed raucously, as though she'd just made a joke, and tried to make a grab for the buckle on his belt, only narrowly missing doing him an awkward injury instead as Anders hastily swatted her hand away. “I might be willing to risk a skin... skinning for a little Sparkly magic. Since Hawke's no longer in the picture.”

“Good night, Isabela,” Anders dropped Isabela on her bunk and pulled up her boots as she flopped onto the sheets, snickering to herself and waving her hands in the air.

“Look at me. I'm casting a spell,” she said brightly, and burst into laughter again. “The templars are coming! Andraste's tits, but I wouldn't mind a little manhandling...”

“Very good, Captain.” Anders retreated quickly, closing the cabin door behind him.

He peered into Hawke's cabin on his way back, telling himself that he was just... checking. Sprawled on the bunk, one booted heel still resting on the floor, Hawke had an arm flung over his eyes, and he seemed to be breathing shallowly, harshly, loud even over the waves, the fingers of his right hand twitching occasionally into claws on the sheets.

“I'm sorry,” Anders said tentatively into the darkened room. He was good enough of a mage to know when he was outclassed strength-wise, and he didn't quite want to entertain the possibility of an angry arcane storm brewing at his back all the way to Seere.

Hawke stilled, for a long, uncomfortable moment, then he said, quietly, his words slurred and dull, “I don't see why you would be. Leave.”

Well, that hadn't been very helpful. “I will. Drop me off at Seere, and you won't have to see me again.”

Hawke's right hand clenched briefly tight, but he nodded, his tone turning emotionless. “I'll tell Isabela in the morning.”

“Thank you.” Awkward, Anders, awkward. More so than the time he'd gotten caught in his undershirt in Sigrun's private chambers by the Warden-Commander, when he had really only been chasing Ser Pounce-a-lot chasing a moth and had forgotten which room he'd run into. Some things were just difficult to fully explain.

Maybe he'd get lucky, and a sea serpent would attack the ship on the way to lighten the mood.

Anders managed not to whoop in jubilation when they finally came within sight of Seere's harbor, leaning precariously over the stern as he watched the outline of the sprawling city grow closer. Perhaps Seere's lack of any decent drink – at least according to Isabela – contributed equally to its lack of Raider presence; the harbor seemed spotted only with merchant junks and barges. The sleek, beautiful Siren's Blade slid neatly between the fat merchant ships, drawing anchor at a respectful distance.

“Normally,” Isabela said, ambling up to his side, “I'd dock and resupply, but we're a little too close to Par Vollen for my comfort. Also, liquor is prohibited in Seere. Coven's rules.”

Isabela hadn't been happy when Hawke had bluntly dictated that they come to Seere, but she hadn't wanted to elaborate. Still, Anders felt that he could perhaps surmise. The Raiders did seem to bear no real fondness for the qunari, which in turn had no use or mercy for the wolves of the sea. Or perhaps it was something else – the few Rivaini who were in Isabela's crew muttered to themselves and cast wary glances at the port city, as though afraid of an attack at any moment. A city that was effectively run by witches probably was a concept that had to be threaded with an ample amount of native superstition.

“Thank you for taking me this far,” Anders said gratefully, shaking her firmly by the hand as her crew lowered one of the small boats into the water, his chest of personal things already on board.

“For old times' sake, Sparkly,” Isabela replied, with an easy grin. “Take care, you hear?”

Merrill stood by, unhappy and quiet, as the rope ladders were prepared, until he was just about to follow whichever poor sod had drawn the short straw to row him to the Docks, then she pressed a pouch into his hands. “This is for you.”

Coin. The Dalish had coin? Seeing his surprise, she looked back down over at the sea, where the waiting boat bobbed gently against the Siren's Blade. “It's not from me. But he's being silly again.”

Anders grimaced, but he had never been particularly interested in dramatic farewells. It was rather a relief that Hawke was nowhere in sight. “Thank him for me, then.”

“I will.” Merrill nibbled on her lower lip, wringing her fingers together, then she sighed. “Well, if you truly must go, then, dareth shiral. May the Dread Wolf never catch your scent.”

“If I don't get a bath sometime soon, I think he probably will,” Anders said, with a quick grin, but Merrill merely stared at him silently until he looked away. Female Dalish Keepers unnerved him no end.

Once the boat had deposited him on the docks, the pirates began to row hurriedly back, ignoring his shouted word of thanks. Shrugging, Anders waved at the Siren's Blade, then hefted the straps secured to the small chest over his shoulder with a grunt of effort and wound his way through the growing crowd that had gathered to chatter and point at the Raider ship with the black flag. His light skin was marking him out from the Rivaini people, but no one gave him more than a second glance as he ascended the wide slabs of weathered stone away from the harbor towards what looked like a mercantile quarter, all square white blocks of stone houses and shops running in spokes along a distant circular space choked thick with colorful stalls.

As he stood, soaking in the sights and the absolute pleasure of a ground that didn't roll and creak under his feet, a pair of women in short tunics, with gnarled staves strapped across their backs and bone wands at their ample hips glided past, smiling and looking him over with an expression that a Ferelden would have called brazen, their noses and ears pierced with gold hoops and silver studs, giggling to themselves when Anders winked at them out of sheer habit.

Somewhere in port, there was a bath, a nice, large bed, and a hot meal. Still, a thread of uncertainty had him look back, over his shoulder, at the faint outline of Isabela's ship as it weighed anchor, the sails billowing to catch the winds, then he squashed it down and turned away.

The Warden outpost in Seere was run by a dwarf named Thos, who seemed to utterly lack any sense of humor, morose and grim. There was an entrance to the Deep Roads close to Seere, and there was a rotating patrol of Wardens that were sent to clear it routinely, in case the darkspawn got their hands on the copious amount of arcane talent concentrated in Seere and used it to make Emissaries.

Anders had once asked the Warden-Commander, in a facetious way, where darkspawn came from, and his curt answer had given Anders nightmares for days.

“Anders... Anders... yes. There's a letter for you.” Thos rummaged in the drawer of his desk for a moment, then slapped a tattered envelope on the desk. The Wardens had acquired a small terrace house on the outskirts of the trade quarter, outfitting it into an office, an infirmary, and spare rooms upstairs. “Reached the office a couple of weeks back.”

“Really? Fanmail? I had no idea that I was so popular.”

“Never heard of you,” Thos said dourly, as Anders picked up the letter. Sealed by the Warden-Commander. Curious. “Are you signing on to any of the patrols?”

“Uh... I'm actually on vacation right now.” Anders hated the Deep Roads. It wasn't as though he had really become a Warden for the usual reasons, anyway.

The envelope contained a single page, with one line in the Warden-Commander's precise handwriting: Meet me at Marothius in Tevinter.

“You say that this came by two weeks ago?” Anders said, with a deep sense of inevitability. It seemed that he was going to be thoroughly late for an appointment after all, Maker have mercy on his soul.

Thos nodded curtly. “The Warden who brought that letter here is on patrol. They're scheduled to be back around this week to resupply. You have questions, you ask him. If you're looking to join up with the patrol, bring your own gear. We're short.”

“I didn't notice,” Anders said, with a grin, but Thos didn't seem to notice the admittedly specie-ist jibe, instead opening a ledger to run his eye over the accounts.

“You've got your letter, you don't need a room, and you aren't signing on to any patrols? Then we don't have any further business.”

“You have such an endearing personality.” Anders told the dwarf, who glowered briefly at him before turning a page and scribbling in the rightmost column.

This was probably the real reason why he'd left the Wardens, Anders decided. The air of melancholy, martyred obsession would take far too much effort to cultivate.

Anders returned to the Warden outpost when he'd overheard gossip in the perhaps aptly named Wharf Rat tavern that a heavily armed posse of battered Wardens had arrived at the northern gate, and found the office in a state of chaos. A barely breathing, broken form lay on a bloody stretcher on the floor of Thos' impeccably swept office, and the other Wardens were ineffectively attempting to stem the bleeding.

“Make way for the free healer,” Anders sighed, kneeling by the Warden's head and gathering magic to his fingertips. The injured Warden was a bulky human, tall and broad-shouldered, and it looked from his massive injuries as though he'd been repeatedly smashed against a rock. Ogre, probably.

It took everything he had, but eventually, the broken ribs mended, the raw mess at his belly knitted together, and the Warden's breathing went from a wet, choking gargle into a shuddering, shallow but fairly even rhythm. Exhausted, Anders slumped back against the wall of the office, sweating even in the chill air.

“About sodding time,” a gruff voice growled to his left, and Anders looked up – not very far – to a familiar, thickly bearded face that smelled of stale liquor and other things best left unmentioned. “Huh. You've lost the manskirts.”

“Oghren!” Anders grinned, relieved to see someone he actually knew. “Maker, but it's good to see you. You brought that letter?”

“Warden-Commander thought you'd end up in Rivain or Tevinter. We drew lots, I got Seere.” Oghren belched a noxious cloud that had Anders hastily turning away and stifling a cough. The dwarf looked none the worse for wear; there was a fresh scar against his forehead, and the Legion armor that he wore looked more battered and patched than Anders remembered, the large double-headed axe at his back sporting a few more nicks along its wicked edge, but other than that, Oghren hadn't seemed to have changed. “I'm thinking it's punishment. Wouldn't put it beyond him to rig it. Sodding tree-huggers are sneaky that way. Thunderhumper! Seere's dryer than the tits of a darkspawn broodmother!”

“Please don't remind me of those things,” Anders groaned, as the other Wardens gently picked up the stretcher at Thos' direction and headed carefully up the stairwell.

“I'm having to brew up my own stash,” Oghren grunted, with a glare up at the ceiling, “Done that before, I don't mind. But that nug-humping Warden outpost officer says I'll bring down the wrath of the sodding witches and get the outpost shut down, and the Warden-Commander told me specifically and in great deal what he'd do to me if that happened. Pah.” Oghren concluded sourly. “You'd think he was daring me.”

“The Warden-Commander wants to speak with me? About what?”

“I've got my money on him wanting to flay you. Sigrun thinks it's hot oil. That pike twirler we put on the throne had five sovereigns on... on... something or other.” Oghren belched again, shot a furtive glance up at the stairs, and chugged something acrid and foul-smelling from a water container slung at his belt, wiping his mouth with the back of his gauntlet. “Aaah. Better. Surface air. Makes my head swim.”

“Wanting to flay me?” Anders repeated, blinking.

“Yeah.” Oghren swayed a little, then righted himself at Anders' stare. “So he defeated that Archdemon, remember? As a mage. Set himself up as seneschal of Ferelden, been doing a half decent job running the country while the pike twirler runs around in the woods playing at being shiny. The templars in Ferelden take a collective stick out of their ass, life for mages slowly becomes a bit easier.”

“I knew this already.” The Warden-Commander oddly seemed to enjoy a fairly conciliatory relationship with both the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander at the Ferelden Circle, and it wasn't a secret that he was working towards having more mages employed in diplomatic positions, like Wynne, freeing them from a life of utter boredom.

“And then you come along,” Oghren pointed at him with a thick, slightly uncoordinated finger. “You disappear, show up in Kirkwall, and shack up with the Champion. So far, so good. Then you blow up the Chantry in Kirkwall with a big light show, and Thedas goes to hell.”

“I did what?” Anders scrambled to his feet. “That isn't funny, Oghren!”

Oghren, however, merely stared at him thoughtfully and slowly – an unnerving expression for the usually crude and/or drunken dwarf. “You want me to repeat that?'

“You're saying that I blew up a Chantry?”

“The Chantry, and the Grand Cleric as well,” Oghren added helpfully. “And all the poor sods inside it at the time.”

Anders could feel the blood draining from his cheeks. “But that would be war! Madness! The Circles would dissolve, the templars would declare rites of annulment!”

“Yeah. Kirkwall burned, Circle was annulled, Knight-Commander ends up dead, and the crazy gets to the rest of the world's Circles and Templar Orders. What I said about the whole place going to hell. Ain't so much in Rivain or Tevinter, since these places don't have Circles. Rest of the world's knee deep in nugshit.”

“You're... you're not joking.” Anders leaned heavily against the wall as his legs abruptly decided that they couldn't take his weight. “Maker. You're not joking.”

Oghren frowned at him. “Did you hit your head on a rock or something? You're acting like you don't remember setting the world on fire.”

“I don't!” Anders slapped a palm over his eyes. “Here's what I remember, Oghren. I was walking in a market in Amaranthine, about to go and have a word with the Warden-Commander about being forced to leave my cat behind. I then wake up on a stone altar in Llomerynn, surrounded by people I don't know! I swear by the Maker that I'm not lying to you.”

Oghren stared at him silently for a moment longer, then he sighed. “By the sodding tits of my ancestors. I think you aren't, at that. That's a sodding sovereign in the betting pool gone to waste.”

“We're discussing my apparent insanity here, concentrate,” Anders growled. “How did I get so far off the bend in just six years?”

“Eh,” Oghren scratched thoughtfully at his beard. “Remember grim, rotting and humorless? Spirit of the Fade?”

“Justice? What about him?”

“Apparently you might of taken the spirit into you as a host. That's when you went berserk in Amaranthine and up and left. That's what the Warden-Commander thinks, anyway.”

“I turned into an abomination and nobody thought to put me down?” Anders demanded incredulously. “Besides, I never got along with him!”

“Hey, don't look at me, Sparkle Fingers. A mountain of other nugshit happened in the Deep Roads while you were away, so the Warden-Commander thought that you and Kirkwall could sort yourselves out,” Oghren shrugged heavily. “Must be kicking himself now, heh.”

“I definitely need a drink,” Anders moaned, pinching at the bridge of his nose, dazed with the impossible. He couldn't accept it. He wouldn't. “I don't believe it.” And yet – this would explain all the strange behavior he had been subjected to by Hawke and the others. Hawke's words, the way the other pirates treated him like he was a walking bomb, Merrill's objections...

Back when he was a child and had first joined the circle, Anders had occasionally dreamed about someday becoming free, and making a name for himself in Thedas. It was nice to know that dreams would come true in the worst ways possible.

“Tough. You're in Seere, and I ain't sharing.” Oghren took a step backwards away from him warily, clutching the foul-smelling container to his hip protectively.

“Anything else I should know while we're at it?”

Oghren seemed to think this over for a moment. “Yeah. You remember what I said about the nugshit in the Deep Roads? It's about to boil over. You're invited to the throw down under Tevinter.” The dwarven Warden looked aggrieved. “I guess it ain't for flaying after all. Leastways, not any more. Just my sodding luck.”

“Invited?”

“Commander's precise words were that if you didn't come, I was going to have to drag you kicking and screaming.” Oghren grunted, and cracked his knuckles meaningfully. “So what's it going to be?”

“I'll go,” Anders said wearily, ignoring how Oghren immediately seemed disappointed. The initial, overwhelming sense of horror and disbelief had abruptly faded into a sense of empty, numb resignation. “If I've really done all that you've said I've done, there's nowhere in Thedas that I can live, anyway.” With himself, especially. “When?”

“I'll send word that I've found you, then we'll be heading westwards once the replacement patrols are here. Long trek towards Tevinter.” Oghren spat on the ground. “Seeing as you couldn't have had the common decency to go to ground there and save us all the searching. We'll just be spending the time killing darkspawn until the replacements get here.”

“I never knew that I'd start looking forward to fighting darkspawn,” Anders muttered.

Oghren patted him heavily on the flank, leaving suspicious, greasy smears on his coat. “That's the spirit.”

Darkspawn activity was low, much to Oghren's evident disappointment. Normally, Anders would have been pleased – it wasn't so much that he feared the creatures, but their deformed bodies and hissing, snarling chatter revolted him on a fundamental level. Particularly ever since he'd found out where they usually came from. Now, however, it simply gave him long spaces of emptiness to fill up with a wellspring of warring emotions; his battered conscience, dull astonishment, resignation, and, when he was particularly tired, an ugly and illogical resentment. It didn't seem fair.

And yet, if Anders had to be absolutely honest, the very first choice was his, the first step on this path, when for whatever, unbelievable reason, he had decided to break all of his personal rules and take a spirit of the Fade into himself. Possession never ended well – this he should have known amply, after what happened in Fereldan's Circle-

He flinched back with a stifled yelp as Oghren kicked him in the shins. “Pay attention, Sparkle fingers. Bad place to be daydreaming.”

The Deep Roads was a dark, empty stretch before and behind them, with a smoothened, if cracking wall to their right, and a sheer drop to their left into a black nothing that sickened the stomach to look down into. The other two Wardens with them were humans; a thin man named Tenner, with silvering hair who never said more than a couple of words at any point, his bow always at the ready, and a slim Rivaini woman named Annanrie, with a jagged scar that ran from under her right cheekbone almost to her left eye, across her crooked nose, two wicked, curved dagger blades sheathed at her ample hips.

They'd been circling the routes below Seere for days since Thos had sent out the message that he had been found, and Anders had long lost count of time. It was enough to be so exhausted at the end of each day that he could sleep more or less uninterrupted, save for the occasional darkspawn dream.

“I wasn't daydreaming,” Anders said defensively, but Oghren had ambled onwards, his greataxe balanced over one shoulder.

“Call it whatever you want, you'll be sorry if you catch a sodding darkspawn arrow between the eyes.”

“Would I be?” Anders sighed. He hadn't dared ask how many people had perished simply within the Chantry alone. All the families that he had torn asunder.

Oghren glanced briefly back at him, bushy eyebrows knit together. “I'll be sorry, then. I told the Warden-Commander I'd bring you back, and that's what I'm going to do.”

“Commitment from Oghren? Perish the thought.”

“That's a little better.” Oghren belched, and fumbled again for the container at his belt. “I didn't mean it about the flaying.”

“That wasn't what was concerning me.”

“Look on the bright side,” Oghren threw his gauntleted hand out to encompass the Deep Roads. “Either you die to darkspawn, like the rest of us poor sods will eventually, or you'll die to the Warden-Commander.”

“Thank you, Oghren,” Anders said dryly. “That makes my day so much brighter.”

“You're sodding welcome.” Oghren shifted the weight of his greataxe. “Stop moaning about it. You're scaring away the darkspawn. I can sense something about, but it's hiding from us.”

“Hiding from your terrible breath, Oghren.”

Sigrun stepped out from around an archway leading deeper into the tunnels, followed by three other Wardens, all of whom looked weary and bruised, but otherwise, none the worse for wear. The female dwarf, like Oghren, seemed to have acquired a few more scars over the years; she had a thin, long one curling up from the gorget at her neck, running over one of her caste tattoos, and her hair seemed recently cut short. She still wore the dark gray and black armor of the Legion, which seemed freshly blooded at the heels.

“You took your sodding time,” Oghren grunted.

“Rockfalls. Hordes of darkspawn. Small inconveniences like that.” Sigrun drawled, trotting up to them and scrutinizing Anders once she was closer. “So you're alive after all. Did Oghren tell you about our bet? I wouldn't have put it beyond him to try and rig things.”

Oghren snorted. “Bet's off, Sigrun. Sparkle fingers played with funny magic and lost the last six years of his memories, plus his Fade spirit passenger. But I would have won anyway.”

“Really? Pity. I had a good flutter going.”

Anders pinched at the bridge of his nose. “No denials? No expressions of concern? No 'hello, it's good to see you?' Am I only worth a few sovereigns to the both of you?”

“The pot was at twenty-one sovereigns, mage, not 'a few',” Sigrun said, though she looked him up and down again, thoughtfully. “You're sure that he's no longer possessed, Oghren?”

“Do I look like some sort of sodding abomination divinator to you?” Oghren growled. “If he shows signs of growling and twitching, we axe him in the kneecaps. Otherwise, he seems fine to me.”

“I feel so loved,” Anders muttered.

“Orders are orders.” Sigrun said dismissively. “Let's not waste time. We need to take a ship to Arlathan from Seere, enter the Deep Roads entrance near the coast, then head to the outpost in the Hundred Pillars. I'll leave my team here with yours to keep the patrols in Seere running, and we'll have to travel light. Marothius has been compromised. I know it'd be difficult to charter a ship without attracting the wrong sort of attention, but we have no choice. Situation's escalated. If we disguise-”

“Disguise? Pah.” Oghren spat thickly on the ground. “I hate that.”

“Oghren's ah, personality doesn't lend itself very well to subterfuge,” Anders agreed dryly.

“Oghren isn't the one who's wanted all over Thedas,” Sigrun shrugged. “So long as he keeps his mouth shut, he doesn't get knocked out and packed into a crate. You're the one we'll have a problem with. Maybe if we could get some girl clothes...”

“I am not going to dress as a woman! Besides, it'll never work.”

“I guess you'll have to shave off that stubble first,” Sigrun conceded. “And wear something high-collared to hide your throat.”

“A 'no' is a 'no', Sigrun.”

Thankfully, after many vehement objections, Sigrun decided to be reasonable. Whatever she managed to scrounge up from the trade quarter stained all his visible skin (and Oghren's gauntlets and parts of his beard) a nut brown dark enough that he could pass as Rivaini save at close inspection, and hair dye colored his hair close to black. Thos grudgingly produced a suit of lightweight armor made of overlapping leather scales and tempered metal greaves that looked like some sort of silverite alloy, and the effect was vaguely reminiscent of Hawke's armor.

“This chafes everywhere,” Anders complained. “How does everyone stand for it?”

“Don't be a baby. That feathers and patchwork disaster you were wearing would have made you stand out everywhere,” Sigrun was busy packing the said 'disaster' into the box which Thos had produced the new armor from. “At least your staff can pass for a spear, if we wrap some cloth around all the runes.”

“I can see why most mages stick to comfortable robes or clothes,” Anders said sullenly, rolling his shoulders to try and settle the overlapping metal over them. “If I had to wear this everyday, I'd start setting everything on fire. And does all this dye come off? It smells. And I think it's beginning to itch.”

“Wash yourself in some liquor and you'll be all pretty again,” Sigrun said, with exaggerated patience, as though speaking to a slow child. “Are you done whining?”

“Well, I'm so glad that you find me pretty,” Anders shot back.

“As pretty as twenty-one sovereigns,” Oghren muttered, from where he was slouched in a spare chair, running a whetstone over his greataxe with practiced care.

Sigrun sighed, even as she closed the box and handed it back to Thos to be stowed in the backroom. “Oghren, don't remind me.”

“I hate you both,” Anders told them, aggrieved.

“Thos has chartered a ship for us, it'll leave on the next tide. Merchant captains are used to Wardens in Seere. They'll drop us off at Arlathan with no questions asked. After that, it'll be only about half a week or so in the Deep Roads and we'll be at the Hundred Pillars outpost.”

“Since we have time,” Anders was pacing in a circle, trying to get used to the new armor before he had to walk out in public in it. The fate of its previous owner was obvious – there had been a large jagged gash across the belly that ended in a dent at the greaves above the right gauntlet, and Thos had patched this over with a few belts and stitches, such that it wasn't even obvious until you knew what you were looking for. Dwarves did obsessively good work. “What about giving me an idea of what's happened?”

“Remember the Architect?” Sigrun had also pulled up a chair, inspecting her blades and gear.

“Tall, deformed and weirdly articulate? Yes.”

Sigrun snorted. “He's kept the darkspawn around Ferelden clear from the Deep Roads as promised. But elsewhere, he's been losing control of them. The group mind's beginning to reject him absolutely. And of course the other Warden-Commanders were even less fond of the idea of bleeding Gray Wardens. Sometime after you left, we answered a call for assistance in the Anderfels. Long and difficult campaign, but we prevented the darkspawn from getting their hands on a fragment of one of Lusacan's scales.”

“Lusacan... the Dragon of Night?” There were two more Old Gods slumbering somewhere in the world, Lusacan and Razikale. Two more potential Blights.

“That's the one. Apparently the scales can be used to trace the Old Gods – that's how the darkspawn usually find them, through starting from old scales or other fragments. Anyway, the fragment was destroyed, and we thought that it was the end of it.”

“So... there's another fragment? Of his toenails or something? Or the first fragment was switched? Wrong thing was destroyed? Fragment wasn't fully destroyed?”

“What? How would you figure that out?” Sigrun frowned at him.

“I spent a lot of my enforced free time in the Circle reading cheap adventure novels,” Anders admitted. “The heroes tend to die at the end, by the way.”

“It wasn't enough,” Sigrun nodded. “We should have kept the ashes of the scale, apparently. Each time a piece of Lusacan is destroyed, if another piece is awakened elsewhere, the other fragments eventually heal up again. Look,” Sigrun added irritably, at Anders' expression of confusion, “I'm not good at this sort of explanation. I prefer to get pointed in one direction and stab something to death.”

“Awakened, how?”

“There's some sort of rite,” Sigrun pulled a face, as though trying to recall the words, “Something that consolidates Lusacan's power when performed in areas of old magic on its prior territory. There was one near Kirkwall, called Sundermount. Someone woke up a piece, years back. Apparently it wasn't anything big, probably just the size of an amulet or something, but it was enough.”

“Convenient.” On the other hand, Anders did know that the Archdemons could only be killed by a strange sort of transference to a Gray Warden, and from what little he knew of Tevinter that hadn't been colored by Chantry reinterpretation, the Old Gods were all different, with different powers. “So the scale regenerated, and it was gone by the time all of you checked.”

“We've heard reports that it's resurfaced in Tevinter,” Sigrun nodded. “The magisters are fighting over it now. And by all reports from the Architect, the darkspawn group mind has gotten wind of it again. Once they get organised, there'll be war.”

“Good,” Oghren grunted, looking up from his axe briefly. “There'll be darkspawn, magisters, abominations and people.” He belched, and looked vaguely satisfied. “Lots of things to axe.”

“You've gotten worse over the years,” Anders observed.

“It's that swill that he distills and drinks all the time, it's rotting his brain.” Sigrun padded over to a window, glancing up at the sky. “We've got another couple of hours or so before we leave. If you have anything else that you want to do in Seere, you had better finish it up.”

The trip to Arlathan forest was eventful, at least. Sigrun was heartily sick throughout the whole voyage due to choppy seas, and having to deal with her temper, prevent unfortunate 'accidents', and mix up various potions in an attempt to settle her nausea at least kept Anders occupied. Sigrun was violent when she was deeply unhappy. Even Oghren eventually just kept to himself topside, drinking and keeping carefully out of sight.

The crew seemed relieved when they were finally deposited on the pristine stretch of white beach that bordered the north boundary of Arlathan, and Sigrun sat down heavily on a rock as the sailors hastily rowed back towards the merchant ship.

“The ground won't stop moving,” she moaned, her head in her hands. “Next time, let's just walk through the Deep Roads. Fighting darkspawn at every corner has to be better than this. Do you have more of that green liquid thing that tasted like nugskin left out too long? I think it helped.”

Anders passed the vial over, and Sigrun drank deep, coughed, and tossed the vial away. “Give or take an hour and you should start feeling better.”

“We don't have that long.” Oghren stared up at the sky, then at the rows of ridiculously tall, massive trees that bordered the shoreline. Through the thick canopy, thin shafts of the late afternoon sun occasionally mottled the mossy ground, and the forest seemed unnaturally still and silent. “According to the reports, this isn't a good place to be after dark. We'll have to reach the Deep Roads entrance before then. Thunderhumper! I hate forests.”

“Do I want to know what's wrong with this place?” Anders asked warily.

“Apparently it's haunted. Lots of tree-huggers died here to human mages, and you're a human mage. Possibly Sigrun and I will be fine.” Oghren grunted, prodding at Sigrun's shoulder with a greasy finger. “You done throwing up?”

Just his luck. “Great.”

“You're all heart, Oghren,” Sigrun muttered. “Remind me to retch over your boots next time.” She stood up, a little unsteadily, then took a deep breath. “Let's move. I'll feel better when we're underground.”

An hour into a trek through the forest and Anders was jumping at shadows. Such a big, richly green forest should be alive with animal and insect sounds. Other than their footsteps, and the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind, however, this stretch of Arlathan was deadly silent. His companions were growing tense, as well; Oghren had his greataxe over one shoulder, his free hand clenched tight into a fist, and Sigrun was keeping close to the both of them where she would usually have been running ahead to scout, checking her map every few minutes.

Eventually, they came to a large, mossy stone, taller than Anders, its flat face scrawled with carvings that were overgrown with moss and vines. Sigrun compared it to her map carefully, then pointed at a small circle. “There. We're nearly at the entrance. This is one of the milestones.”

“Or we could be here.” Oghren pointed at another circle further to the left, in the wrong direction of the marker for the Deep Roads entrance. “We've been walking longer than we sodding should.”

“The last time we let you navigate, we ended up circling back to where we started,” Sigrun retorted.

“And the last time you navigated-”

“How do we know which circle is which?” Anders interrupted, peering around them warily.

“There's a marking on each one. See this.” Sigrun pointed at the elvhen script scrawled below the circle that she thought they were at. “Apparently it reflects one of the stones. But the light's getting bad, and we're going to have to save our torches for the Deep Roads.”

“Light isn't a problem.” Anders held out his hand, concentrating, until a ball of fire danced in his palm. As he held it up to the stone, scanning for tracings, there was a sudden, deep and rumbling groan behind them.

“You hear that?” Sigrun asked nervously, blades drawn. “I heard that.”

“Shemlen,” the word was whispered around them, in a seething, disembodied hiss. “Shem'nan.”

“Put that out!” Oghren grabbed at his wrist, even as there was a roar of sound, crackling and creaking, and the trees began to twist, the roots seething and snapping under the soil, making the ground heave and quake.

“Shemlen! Shem'nan!” The whisper turned into a sussurating roar.

“I really, really hate my life,” Anders said, wide-eyed, as branches thicker than his waist overhead twisted and curled, as though trying to reach downwards towards them.

“Shut up and run!” Sigrun snarled. “We're not far away!”

“If we drop our packs-”

“If we drop our packs we won't survive the Deep Roads, idiot,” Oghren growled, already running past him. “Move!”

Dwarves could run very quickly when they wanted to. Also, the roots and branches that swept down or curled up to trip them seemed less interested in Sigrun and Oghren, scratching instead at Anders' armor and at the barrier he drew around himself, concentrating as much as he could on keeping his footing. Oghren roared, the greataxe swinging in a wide arc, lopping off a tree root that surged out of the ground before him, and Sigrun was darting away from a sweeping branch, slashing ineffectively before her.

Something that he couldn't see pounded the ground before him, the shockwave slamming Anders off his feet into an awkward tumble, tearing at his pack, but he rolled hastily and scrambled back up as roots stabbed into the ground where he had been. He drew fire into his palm, only for Sigrun to look back and yell, “No more sodding fire magic! Or any magic! If you piss them off any more-”

“You mean there's a state of being further pissed off than this?” Anders shouted back, but he closed his fingers over the fire, extinguishing it. A branch snapped up against his ribs, knocking him down again, but Oghren bodily dragged him back up to his feet by hauling on his belt, grunting and severing the branch with another swing of his greataxe.

“Is this all you've got?” the dwarf berserker roared, hefting his axe. “You don't sodding scare me! Go back to sleep, you nug-humping elf ghosts, or you'll be tasting dwarven-forged steel!”

The roar of sound around them died briefly, then returned in an ululating, inhuman scream of anguish and fury that had Anders clap his hands hurriedly over his ears. Sigrun was shouting something at them, pointing, and Anders looked to his right. And promptly regretted it.

Keeping in pace with them was something big, shadowy and dark, with at least four limbs, roughly dog shaped, bigger than a house, occasionally sleeting through trees, like a spectre. Somehow, they found it within them to double their pace, running headlong through the seething forest, and just as Anders felt that his heart was about to give out, Sigrun pointed again, this time ahead of them.

Rising out from the undergrowth was a small hill, upon which a stone slab of a door was set.

Sigrun was the first to the door, and she turned white as a sheet as she pushed against it. “It's jammed!”

He loved his life.

“It isn't of dwarven make,” Oghren grunted, as he slammed his shoulder against it, his boots skidding in the soil. “Sodding... thunderhumping... nugloving shoddy elvhen construction...!”

With all three of them pushing against the door, Anders heard a faint, dull creak, deep within, even as a root curled around his foot and dragged him in a jerk from the door. Sigrun's wrist flashed, and a thrown dagger severed the root even as Anders scrambled to his feet, but the backward glance was enough to see that the huge dark shadow had stopped, circling slowly before them, still amorphous, its very edges writhing and undefined.

Then it leaped.

This was probably, in hindsight, what saved their hides. A foul wind screamed before it like a herald, like a twisting, writhing thing that sliced at their bared skin and armor and flattened them against the stone. The force was too great for the old hinges, however; and with a screeching, ugly whine of metal, they fell backwards into the dark into a tangle of cursing dwarves and jabbing limbs.

On his back on what felt like blessedly cold stone, Anders stared up, wide-eyed, at the rectangle of light and forest they had come from as it was blotched out briefly by a black mass of shadow, beset by green-tinted elvhen eyes, narrowed in malevolent hatred, then the forest grew silent once more.

“Sweet Andraste.” Anders said, turning his eyes back up to the ceiling, as they all caught their breath.

Slowly, Sigrun disentangled herself and got to her feet. She punched Oghren in the face, making the berserker wobble back with a muttered oath against the lichen-etched walls. “That's for pissing them off.” Then she kicked Anders in the ribs, causing him to yelp. “And that's for starting it. 'Light isn't a problem', my sodding ass. Let's move. The sooner we can get to the Deep Roads, the better. This place gives me the sodding creeps.”

Compared to the Arlathan forest, the Deep Roads was restful, even with the darkspawn patrols, probably because both Sigrun and Oghren were far more relaxed underground. They skirted the larger patrols and engaged darkspawn only when fully necessary – to Oghren's disappointment – and made good time, reaching the hidden, fortified door set within a maze of side tunnels within three days, to Sigrun's count.

The Warden outpost in the Hundred Pillars was more of a small Keep, hidden deep in the mountains with only a steep trail outwards or the Deep Roads as exits. Usually, it was run by a skeletal staff, according to the few reports that Anders had once read over the Warden-Commander's desk, but today it seemed to be full of more Wardens than Anders had ever seen in one place, humans, elves and dwarves all.

It seemed that they also weren't the only Wardens to have come recently through the Deep Roads entrance, but once Sigrun identified them to the Warden barracks officer who was attempting to assign them free rooms, he frowned. “Anders, Sigrun and Oghren of Ferelden?”

“Orzammar,” Oghren corrected, and belched.

“The Commander of the Grey of Ferelden is expecting you. Show them to the command hall,” the officer told another Warden, who nodded in acknowledgment.

“No betting pool jokes, please,” Anders muttered, as they were led away.

“Who said we were joking?” Oghren grunted.

“Maybe he won't recognise you. That's was some pretty good dye that we got.” Sigrun added comfortingly.

The command hall was a large, circular room high up in the Keep, with barred glass windows overlooking the winding trail leading down the mountainside. Maps of Thedas and Tevinter were plastered over the walls, and there was a large map over a square stone table in the center of the command room of Tevinter, with tokens set up around it. Wardens of various races and species stood respectfully around the perimeter, and at the table, having a loud argument about tactics, were Warden-Commander Surana and, of all the people in Thedas, Hawke.

“... that's suicide,” Hawke growled, “There's no chance that we can breach the outer walls!”

“Leave the military planning to someone with actual experience,” Surana retorted, bitingly blunt, looking slim and small even in his dragonbone armor compared to Hawke. “Your suggestions are duly noted...” his voice trailed off, frowning as he glanced over at the door. “Sigrun, Oghren. Good work. And you.”

Hawke turned on his heel sharply, and stared at him with an expression of wide-eyed astonishment. “Anders? What are you doing here? What did you do to your-”

“I'm told that it'd wash off,” Anders cut in. So much for not being recognised. “What are you doing here?”

“I received a message from the Warden-Commander,” Hawke said, the astonishment shutting away under a cold mask. “Why didn't you stay in Seere?”

“Same reason.” Anders edged around Hawke carefully, walking forward. “I got the Warden-Commander's letter of instruction in Seere.”

“As I thought.” Surana strode over to him, looking him thoughtfully over. “And I received a most curious reply from Oghren a few days ago. I have questions for you afterwards.”

“I'll answer them.” Anders bowed his head. “Uh... just so that we're clear, you're not really going to flay me, are you?”

“Am I?” Surana said, with deceptive calm.

Whatever Surana had picked up in the Brecilian Ruins, it allowed him to wear armor like a warrior and, when he wanted to, to hit like an ogre. The blow knocked him off his feet and sent him skidding on the ground, and even as he thought he heard his jaw crack, Anders knew that Surana had pulled it.

Before he could say something, however, Hawke snarled, and the Warden-Commander was abruptly tossed backwards like a ragdoll, slamming with a grunt into the wall. Hawke had fire in his palm, and the room was beginning to crackle with static, but before Anders could tell him to stop, Hawke froze, a slim blade pressed at his throat.

“Put the fire away, if you please.” Anders hadn't even seen Zevran enter the room, but the assassin was behind Hawke, a blade drawn at his throat. The other Wardens in the room had also drawn their weapons; even Sigrun and Oghren.

“Stand down.” Surana picked himself up from the ground. “Zevran. I have what I wanted.”

Zevran smiled lightly, and stepped away, sheathing his blade as he stepped over to Surana's side. Hawke was watching them with narrowed eyes, even as he offered a hand to Anders to get up, as though all unthinking, and his grasp was firm and honest. Grimacing, Anders pressed a little healing magic to his mouth until the ache went away.

“What you wanted?” Hawke repeated, his tone in the same dangerous calm that Anders had heard on the ship.

“A confirmation that you could indeed be trusted.” Surana turned back to the table. “We'll leave further discussion and the full briefing for until the Commander of the Grey of Nevarra arrives. Anders, I will have a word with you when you are settled.”

“All right.” Anders said, as meekly as he could, in case further punches were forthcoming. Hawke shot Surana a cold, evaluating stare, then he muttered something under his breath and stalked out of the chamber.

In the awkward silence that followed, Oghren belched. “Angry ex? I know what that's like.”

Sigrun stepped heavily on his foot. “Shut up, Oghren.”

From the barracks gossip, Anders divined that the Warden-Commander had split his forces between the Hundred Pillars outpost and another one in the Silent Plains. Nathaniel Howe was in charge there, apparently, with Stroud and the Architect. As to Velanna, it seemed that she had disappeared into the Deep Roads years ago, with no one the wiser.

Hawke had arrived a week ago through the Deep Roads, with a handful of mismatched companions, and they had been set up in makeshift rooms in the south wing of the Keep, away from the barracks. After washing off the dyes in liquor and rinsing over until he couldn't smell it on his skin any longer, Anders found himself heading to the south wing, despite all his well-honed survival instincts telling him to stay out of Hawke's way.

Still, this wasn't any sort of business for non-Wardens, and Anders' battered conscience felt that he should at the very least make Hawke understand this, whatever the Warden-Commander may have told him. Turning over possible ways to start the conversation in his mind, distracted, Anders nearly walked straight into a templar dressed in the Order's distinctive plate armor in the corridor leading to the south wing. Mumbling his apologies, Anders tried to step around him, only for the templar to grab at his elbow, with narrowed eyes.

The templar had dark hair the same hue as Hawke, and as he frowned, his face turned from something that Anders would have called borderline comely into the usual Mask of Templar Disapproval. “So you're here after all. It figured.”

“What is the Order doing here?” Anders asked warily, ready to lash out and get out of range of a smite or cleanse.

The templar's brow, however, only furrowed deeper, and he looked him over thoughtfully before letting go of his arm. “I always told my brother that you were a mistake. Overall, I think you've done more damage to his life than even the loss of our sister and our mother.”

“Your brother?” The familial resemblance finally struck. “You're Hawke's brother?”

“I heard that you had forgotten everything,” the templar said, with an edge of contempt. “I'm Carver Hawke. You probably don't even know my brother's first name any longer, do you? Has anyone even told you what you've even done?”

“Apparently, I got myself possessed and screwed the world over,” Anders backed away carefully. “I'm actually wondering why none of you thought to kill me first.”

“It's something I regret now and then,” Carver said curtly, stalking down the corridor away from the south wing. “I don't see eye to eye with my brother on most things. But if I could get away with it, I'll throw you from the battlements now for what you've done to him.”

Well. That was encouraging. Anders waited until the templar had walked out of sight, then he edged into the south wing, wary of any other protective Hawke siblings. The chamber was empty of furniture, save for a rug at a narrow balcony, upon which Merrill sat, eyes closed and cross-legged, facing the sky.

Edging as quietly as he could across the chamber, Anders had nearly reached the next adjoining corridor when she said, without turning around, “Aneth ara, Anders. As Asha'bellanar would say – I am not sure if it is fate, or chance.”

“Cruel coincidence, I think,” Anders said wryly. “Is Isabela here as well?”

“No. She has her own life now, back on the sea.” Merrill replied, bowing her head lightly. “But those who could come, they have come. Fenris and Varric are here, though they're out in the Keep grounds at the moment, and you've met Carver. Aveline couldn't leave Kirkwall.”

Anders decided not to belabor the point by noting that he didn't know who – or what – Merrill was talking about. “Good to know.”

“Hawke's in his room,” Merrill's tone turned a little gentler. “It's the one at the very end. I'm glad that you're back.”

“Quite possibly, you're the only one.” Anders replied, taking a deep breath and casting one last long glance at the exit behind him.

Next to Hawke's door was a huge mabari, which by its lack of warpaint didn't seem to belong to the Warden-Commander. It sat up when he approached, then panted and wagged its stubby tail excitedly, barking and snuffling affectionately at his hands. It knew him, then, and trusted him. Oddly enough, this, more than anything, was the final fact that cemented everything that seemed to have happened to him.

“I'm a cat person,” Anders told it, if wryly, scratching it awkwardly behind its ears, and it barked and rolled onto its back, wriggling in delight.

The door opened, and Hawke frowned at him from within it. He was dressed in a light jacket and breeches rather than his strange wolf's fur armor, and the effect made him look starkly out of place, even as the fabric accentuated his naturally broad shoulders and lean, compact build where the armor did not.

“Why are you here?”

“Can we talk? Please?” Anders asked hopefully. “Preferably not in the corridor?”

Hawke stared at him for a long, inscrutable moment, then he inclined his head and stepped back into his room. Murmuring a silent apology to the mabari, Anders followed, closing the door behind him.

Hawke's room was as militant as the rest of the keep, with only a bed, a desk and a set of now familiar chests along the left wall to serve as furniture. The other mage had walked up to the narrow window in the room, his arms crossed behind his back.

Suddenly uncertain as to how to start, Anders decided to try for neutral. “About what happened with the Warden-Commander, uh, just for your information, I think he's merely stressed. Normally, he's quite personable.”

“He hurt you to prove a point about me to himself,” Hawke retorted evenly. “I'll remember that.”

“By all accounts, I deserved that anyway. At least it's better than being-”

Hawke seemed to tense. “You found out what happened?”

“Oghren told me.”

Hawke sighed, but he didn't turn around. “I suppose that was inevitable after all. And no, you didn't deserve it. Nor did you deserve how we treated you after the ritual, all the way to Seere. As you are now, I don't believe that you would have done what you did. You're a different person in many respects. I was angry, at the world, and at myself for having effectively murdered the most important person to me in the world by my own hands on an altar in Llomerynn, and I took that out on you. For that, I have no excuses, and I apologize.”

“Oh.” Anders said, blinking. He hadn't expected that. “Um. Don't mention it.”

“I'll make up for it,” Hawke continued, decisively. “You shouldn't be persecuted for something you wouldn't have done. Whether by the Warden-Commander, Starkhaven, or anyone else.”

And to that, Anders couldn't think of anything immediately relevant to say. He didn't doubt that Hawke meant it – would bleed for his own words if he had to. It was... unsettling. And if the selfish part of Anders had to admit it – it was gratifying. “I'm not the man you loved. You don't have any obligations to me.”

“There was good in y... in him,” Hawke corrected, a little awkwardly. “Something that you may have come naturally into, I think, if you haven't already. Everything else was broken, and I always turned a blind eye to it, and in the end, Kirkwall paid for it. With you as you are now – that merely drives in this fact.”

“What I did when I was possessed, it wouldn't have been your fault.”

“And how would you know?” Hawke shot back, his fists clenching. “Just before everything... you – you as you were then – told me that you had researched a Tevinter potion that could separate yourself and that Fade spirit you had in you. It would need something you called sela petrae, and drakestone, and you needed to be in the Chantry to complete it. Fool that I was,” Hawke said, with a forced, ugly laugh, “I believed you. I had a little doubt – that there couldn't have been any potion, with such poisonous materials, let alone a potion that needed to be mixed in a place of no power – but I wanted to believe in you.”

Sela petrae and drakestone. So that was what had happened. The explosion at the end result must have been horrifying. And to think that the possessed version of him had simply used Hawke to do it... Anders couldn't even begin to imagine the immensity of his betrayal.

“Why didn't you kill me after you found out?”

“Can you so simply kill someone whom you've loved for years – lived with for three years, at that?” Hawke let out a deep, slow breath. “I could not.” Another slow breath, then, “What did you want to speak with me about?”

“Well, ah, about that,” Anders said uncomfortably, still off-balance by the raw pain in Hawke's tone, “Perhaps it can wait.”

“Tell me what you need,” Hawke shrugged. “If you want my aid, you'll have it.”

The Maker could be so perversely cruel, Anders felt. Somehow, Anders had met someone like Hawke only after he had effectively turned into an abomination, and then managed against all odds to acquire his love and live with him for three years in a relationship, and then shred everything apart. “I was wondering what you were doing here. This is Warden business.”

“Apparently what has happened was partially my fault,” Hawke said dryly. “Years ago I did a favor for someone – or something - that saved my family's lives. As it turned out, I actually assisted in the performance of some elvhen ritual in Sundermount that-”

“It was you?” Anders blinked.

“Don't rub it in, you were there too,” Hawke retorted, then he sobered. “Or at least, what you were. The Warden-Commander had a dream a month or so ago, where he saw our faces, dropping away from a great height as though he was taking flight, and decided to send me a message to see if I still had the amulet or knew where it might be.”

“So you know where the amulet is?”

“No. Unfortunately.” Hawke sighed. “But the Warden-Commander has others working on that at present. Our task here is to take custody of the scale before the darkspawn acquire it.”

“And he asked you to help?”

“Actually, no. But it's not like I have anything else to do at present,” Hawke said, with a touch of wry humor.

“And so out of boredom you decide to assist the Warden-Commander in assaulting the Tevinter Imperium.”

“Yes. Succinctly, yes.” Hawke's lips curled into a grin, unafraid and utterly confident. Here was a man before whose will the world could only tremble. There was going to be fireworks and trouble ahead when it clashed with the Warden-Commander's equally inexorable determination.

Before he could think his words over, Anders found himself chuckling at the very thought. “Andraste's flaming knickers, why couldn't I have met you before I got taken over by a spirit?”

It was entirely the wrong thing to say – Hawke's grin faded, and he stiffened visibly, and his voice turned clipped again. “Was there anything else that you wanted to speak with me about?”

Is there any remote chance that we could start over, Anders wanted to say, on sheer impulse, but this time, he squashed it down. “If I can't convince you that it's Warden business, no. It'll be dangerous. People can die, or get infected by the taint. Your friends-”

“Are here of their own choice and volition.” Hawke said, with a faint hint of reproach at the very suggestion. “If there's nothing else, please leave. I need to think.”

“But I-”

“Please, Anders.”

Awkwardly, Anders muttered a mumbled farewell, and slunk out of the room, combing fingers through his bound hair with an undefined sense of frustration. Perhaps the Warden-Commander could assign him onto a patrol. If he had to sit around in the Keep drowning in his thoughts, he might just go crazy again.

Anders eventually located the Warden-Commander at the battlements, overlooking the sea of snow-peaked mountains that bounded Tevinter from Antiva, speaking quietly with Zevran. He had seen the Antivan assassin before, flitting in and out of Vigil's Keep apparently on a whim and fancy, but he hadn't thought much more of it.

It wasn't as though Zevran was the oddest member of the Warden-Commander's group of friends, which included qunari, a stone golem and the King of Ferelden. Zevran was decidedly comely, and seemed to flirt with anything that moved as a default, and if not for the fact that he was an ex-Antivan Crow, Anders might even have considered a brief tumble.

“Anders.” Surana inclined his head when Anders stopped at a respectful distance. “How was your journey here?”

“Terrible. Fraught with unexpected horrors. The usual.”

“I see. Sigrun did have a rather incoherent and improbable tale involving the Arlathan forest, but she was fairly intoxicated at the time.”

“I believed her,” Zevran said genially. “The Arlathan forest is a strange and wonderful place. And, best left alone. Like many places that are strange and wonderful.”

“So it is true that you do not remember all that you have done since Amaranthine?” Surana asked, and as always, his expression was a calm, inscrutable mask.

“I don't. I wish I did.”

“Really?” Zevran asked, with a quick grin. “I was there at the last bit – just for a little fun. You spent a lot of it running around screaming and being chased by magically animated bronze statues.”

Anders scowled at Zevran, trying to ascertain if he was being pranked, but the elf grinned impishly at him, unrepentant. “You were there?”

“Warden-Commander's instructions,” Zevran rolled his slender shoulders in a shrug. “I was meant to keep an eye on you, but unfortunately, the Crows caught up with me, and I was busy, and then the city caught fire. Very sad.”

“But Justice is gone.” Surana looked him over slowly, frowning a little as he faded to translucence, ghost-like.

“I hate it when you do that,” Anders shuddered.

Surana solidified back into focus, a faint curl to his lip. “Yes. It's gone.”

“Was that an expression of happiness or disappointment?”

“A little of both. Breaking your nose will have little significance now, or satisfaction,” Surana glanced back over at the mountains. “And we do need all the Wardens we can afford for the days ahead. So, welcome back to the Grey Wardens, Warden Anders.”

“I'm so delighted to have fallen back into the lap of the cat-haters.”

“I didn't say that you couldn't have a cat, Anders,” Surana said patiently, “Only that you couldn't bring one with you into the Deep Roads, after your attempt to save your cat's life nearly got you and another Warden killed.”

“But we're in the Deep Roads almost all the time,” Anders pointed out, “That means I can't have a cat. You bring your dog to the Deep Roads. That's a double standard.”

“A mabari hound is rather more different from a cute little feline,” Zevran observed.

“The answer's still no, Anders. But don't worry,” Surana added, absently. “Ser Pounce-a-lot is still alive. Older and set in its ways now, perhaps, but it's still at the outpost in Amaranthine. You can go back to see it, perhaps, after this. Have you spoken with Hawke?”

“I have. Things are... awkward.”

“I understand.” Surana inclined his head. “He's a good man. Hotheaded and stubborn, though, and far too inclined to think that he's right all the time. I wouldn't ask this of you if I could, but our campaign in Tevinter is going to be difficult enough without me having to argue with or keep an eye on him every step of the way.”

“He won't listen,” Anders disagreed. “I'm not the person he used to know. He's acknowledged that.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” Surana smiled faintly. “I doubt that what drove him to care for you involved your spiritual possession. From what I heard, you still had your mind, or parts of it, for most of all that time. That can't have changed very much.”

“I'm somewhat disturbed to think that my own Commander might think me capable of blowing up the chantry.”

“I didn't mean that,” Surana frowned at him. “You spent all those years running a free clinic for the poor in Kirkwall, to aid the poor, particularly the Fereldan refugees. I think that you would do that again if you had to. Even with no spirit of 'Justice' in your mind. You were a healer when I first met you, after all.”

“Old habits die hard?”

“It can't all have been different,” Surana leaned his elbows on the battlements. “I think he will see that.”

“I hope not. I can't imagine being chained to one person for that long.” Though, even as he did say that-

“Being chained to someone can be a fun activity,” Zevran quipped, as Surana chuckled.

“You can taste the lie in your words better than I can express it to you, Anders.”

A strange looking dwarf and a stranger looking elf approached Anders in the courtyard while he was checking his supplies with the rest of the patrol scheduled to enter the Deep Roads. With the Wardens having to beat a strategic retreat (read: driven out) of Marothius, the patrols were having to cover extra ground just to keep their position in the Hundred Pillars.

The dwarf looked like he was surface born, beardless and wearing a shirt that was unbuttoned nearly to his navel, with a colorful trench coat, wide boots and gold rings and earrings, like a strange, squat version of a Llomerynn tinker. A massive, self-modified crossbow was slung across his back, equally gaudy and incomprehensible.

The elf, however, somehow managed to exceed even the dwarf in his strangeness of appearance; he wore black armor that looked thoroughly uncomfortable and impractical, dotted with Tevinter runes, and despite the slightness of his appearance had a massive broadsword in a scabbard on his back. Dark skinned and silver haired, pale, vein-line tattoos circled what was visible of his skin on his arms and his neck, and from this distance, the feel of lyrium was distinctly and disconcertingly familiar.

“Blondie. Good to see that I don't have to change the nickname, everything seems to have washed off nicely.” The dwarf ambled up to him, and it took Anders a moment to realize that he was being addressed. “Merrill explained your circumstances. We've met before, but I'm pleased to make your acquaintance again. My name is Varric Tethras. My broody friend here is known as Fenris.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Anders said warily.

“Tch.” Fenris scoffed. “He truly does not remember. This is a waste of time, Varric.”

“Nothing's a waste of time when you're cooped up in a keep with no entertainment in sight,” Varric pointed out. “Going somewhere, Blondie? Don't tell me we're heading out already.”

“I'm a Warden,” Anders said patiently, “That means I go on patrols in the Deep Roads.”

“But you hate the Deep Roads.” Varric raised both eyebrows.

“Try not to do that, please. Knowing things about me that I don't remember ever telling you. It's really unnerving. Besides,” Anders added wryly, “Nobody likes the Deep Roads. It's dark, dank, smells of darkspawn, and there aren't any tea parties.”

“You're far more fun like this. Just like when we first met,” Varric grinned. “Less of the doom, gloom and weird blue glowing effects.”

“Nothing wrong with blue glows,” Fenris muttered.

“Of course not. The both of you should have made some sort of club. 'People who Glow Blue Anonymous'. Things could have turned out much better if you worked out all your anger issues and problems in a group.”

“I don't think you can 'work out' possession in a group, Varric.” Anders glanced over at the other Wardens as they began to finish packing up their rationed supplies. “I have to go. Perhaps we should have a drink sometime.”

“Does Hawke know that you're going on patrols?” Varric asked, almost as an afterthought.

“I didn't tell him specifically, why? I answer to the Warden-Commander, not him.”

“Oh, and this is how everything tends to go to shit,” the dwarf sighed. “Fenris?”

Fenris snorted, but he turned to trot briskly back towards the Keep proper. Anders frowned at Varric as the dwarf fell into pace beside him. “You don't have to come. You're not a Warden.”

“I reckon Bianca could take on a darkspawn or two despite our lack of official sanction.” Varric patted the stock of the massive crossbow at his back. “Don't mind me.”

“Fenris went to speak with Hawke? Why would he do that?” Anders asked, puzzled, as they descended the narrow stairwell from the courtyard into the basement level of the Keep, pausing briefly as the patrol leader checked with the roster officer to ensure that the previous patrol had returned in full. “Wardens go on patrols. It's common knowledge.”

“Possibly,” Varric said, with an irritating grin, all the way until they reached the double-barred reinforced doors at the lowest level of the Keep and found Hawke waiting for them there, dressed in his odd wolf's fur armor, his bladed staff in hand, slightly out of breath. “Well, what a coincidence.”

Hawke inclined his head at Varric. “Indeed.”

“You want to come along?” Anders frowned. “Why? The Deep Roads isn't entertaining.”

“I know. We walked through it to get here from Antiva.” Hawke said, unconcerned, though Anders could feel a little static in the air, and the thrilling, faint hint of an open flame. Hawke was tense, but other than the leaking arcane energy, he wasn't outwardly showing signs of it.

“This is a patrol, not a tour,” Anders retorted. Going to the Deep Roads in an attempt to avoid his immediate problems wasn't going to work if said immediate problem was tagging along.

“I'm well aware,” Hawke said blithely, as the Wardens posted at the door finally slid the last bolt free. “Shall we?”

After a couple of weeks of having Hawke come along on every single patrol that Anders was assigned to, Anders was ready to set fire to something in frustration. The Commander of the Grey for Nevarra had yet to arrive, and they didn't have enough men to retake Marothius. That meant an endless cycle of patrols for the Wardens already in the keep, and as such, an endless cycle of days spent in close proximity to Hawke. And, by some sort of cruel and perverse consequence, nights spent huddled in his bunk or sleeping roll, plagued with dreams that had him wake either aching or soiled.

It was getting ridiculous. Anders had tried reasoning with Hawke – who had turned out to be every bit as stubborn as Surana had suggested, arguing with Hawke, which was even less productive, as the man had a deep vein of iron calm that was unshakeable when he wanted it to be, and, as a last resort, petitioning the Warden-Commander, who had told him brusquely to keep trivial concerns to himself.

Anders had briefly considered the possibility of approaching one of the other Wardens, for a quick fumble and some relief, but Isabela's drunken words on her ship always made him pull up short. Hawke was a very powerful mage, perhaps on par even with the Warden-Commander, and Anders didn't want to see what he could do if he truly got angry. Or what the Warden-Commander would do to Anders in turn once he found out that it was sort of Anders' fault. Surana was very good at delegation when he was thoroughly unhappy.

Zevran's suggestion hadn't even been worth repeating. And was contributing to the consequential problems, damn it all. He didn't want to approach Hawke. Not only because Anders did have boundaries about using people – at least when he was in his right mind – doing so might also give Hawke the wrong impression. Or worse. Anders didn't want to face that deadly calm again, or that look of crushing disappointment.

Come to think of it, he'd been going without for somewhat longer than he ever remembered, periods spent hiding from templars in forests or dragged into the Deep Roads by the Warden-Commander aside. This was ridiculous. Anders couldn't even think of what it would have been like to be stuck with someone for three years. Someone surely should have realized he was crazy at that point. No variety in the mix and all the complications that came with anything serious. Going to bed every night with Hawke, running his hands over all that compact, lean muscle, scenting fire and lightning in the air...

Anders groaned, rolled over in the bed and pulled his pillow over his head, as his arousal pulsed insistently against his thigh. If he fell over into a chasm on tomorrow's patrol, it would be Hawke's fault. Falling asleep took a couple of attempts to count to hundred while emptying his mind.

The problem with mages and dreams, Anders felt, was that their prior experience with walking the Fade, whether from the Harrowing or from fun times with lyrium, always meant that he tended to know when he was dreaming and when he wasn't, and sometimes he couldn't immediately wake up. This tended to be awkward for dreams where he had no pants or where he needed the bathroom.

Speaking of pants, Anders looked down out of habit, and found himself back in the feathers and coat getup. With pants, thankfully. Explaining the lack of pants in dreams with his projections was just as awkward as it would be in real life, and he tended to remember it when he woke up.

He was in an empty house, some sort of noble's mansion, judging from the antique oak and mahogany furniture, swords, shields, crests and strange statuette décor, with a large stone fireplace to his right, a writing desk before him and empty tables lining the walls to his left. A doorway to his left seemed to lead to some sort of private library, and a stairway upwards before the door led to a second floor. He was fairly sure that he had never seen this house before.

Puzzled, Anders turned around, to see a closed door in an entrance room, and he walked over to it to try the knob. Locked.

“This is a boring dream so far,” Anders muttered to himself, but nothing changed. Admittedly, it wasn't good to tempt fate. 'Empty' haunted houses were fairly high up on his Disliked Dreams list.

The library was empty as well, and the books had blurred titles and were blank. At the desk in the library were familiar scrolls – drafts of his possessed self's ramblings about mages and templars, the words in sharp focus, and with a grimace, Anders backed out of the library and headed up the stairway. Creepy.

Upstairs had two rooms, a locked one immediately at the top of the stairway, and one with its door ajar. Carefully steeling himself, Anders opened it.

Hawke stood in the master bedroom, dressed in his form-fitting maroon jacket and breeches, looking through his wardrobe – and were those slippers? - looking every inch the rich landowner. He turned to look at Anders when he entered the room, and he smiled, warm and tender and affectionate, and Anders' heart skipped a beat. So it was going to be one of those dreams.

As a whole, he rather preferred the mindless sex ones.

“Welcome home, love. Late night at the clinic?”

Comfortable words in a comfortable conversation, probably something that Hawke had said hundreds of times before. Anders felt a brief, uncomfortable dissonance that he couldn't quite put his finger on, and while trying to chase it up, said automatically, “What clinic?”

Hawke's smile vanished. “Ah,” he said, a little regretfully. “My apologies. I was thinking of-”

“The other Anders?” Anders asked dryly, vaguely curious if it was possible for him to sabotage a dream that was obviously set up for some sort of sexual gratification.

“You don't need to say that like you're jealous,” Hawke chuckled, stalking closer, all grace and silent strides, crowding Anders back until he was pressed against the papered wall. “You don't need to be.”

“Really?” Anders could feel his heart hammering now, so real for a dream, even with the cloudy edges around him that spoke of the Fade to the mage part of his mind, and Hawke smiled, all tenderness again as he leaned forward to kiss him, unafraid and confident like he was in all things, his tongue delving deep into Anders' mouth as he gasped and Hawke was good at this, or practiced; he knew exactly what Anders wanted, knew to push it to the edge where the want of air almost became need, pull back with a breathy moan, and kiss him again before he was ready, holding him close and still with his right hand curled around the back of his neck, thumb and forefinger digging into his skin.

Anders found himself rubbing anxiously against the thin material of Hawke's breeches, pulling awkwardly at the catches to his jacket, relieved. So the dream was moving into the mindless sex portion. Joy! If anyone woke him up now, that person was going to get torched.

“Really,” Hawke grinned, and there was a trace of smugness there that made Anders growl and lean forward to nip at his sensuous lower lip, chuckling as Hawke shuddered and began to work expertly at the buckles to his coat, dragging it off his shoulders.

“I'm not-,” Anders began breathlessly, and kicked himself mentally as he hurriedly swallowed the rest of his words before he managed to ruin his own wet dream.

Fingers trailed up his neck and swept in a heartbreakingly gentle caress over his left cheek, to comb up through his hair and loose it from the binding. “I know. Some days I think it's unfair of me to want you still,” Hawke purred against his air, nipping at it until he shivered and moaned. “I'm not entirely sure if I'm simply using you. It's not what I want for you. But some days,” Hawke kissed up to the edge of his mouth, and flicked his tongue over his lips, teasingly, chuckling when Anders pulled at his shoulders with a low whine, “I think perhaps that all I was in love with before were the echoes of who you are. What you could be. Maybe that forgives a little selfishness.”

“A six-year Anders preparation course?” Anders suggested, with a grin.

“Excluding the parts where you had blanks in your memory or... that thing you did,” Hawke said, a little delicately. “Perhaps so. I think I probably needed it.”

“So you know everything that I like,” Anders bit down on his own lower lip with a gasp as Hawke slid his hands into his undershirt, rucking it up and stroking the roughened pads of his thumbs over his hardening nipples, then doing it again with the edges of his nails. “Oh sweet Maker, I think you do.”

Hawke smiled, all velvet seduction as he pulled off Anders' tunic, then undid the belts at his waist. “I could show you.”

Mentally making a silent prayer to the Maker not to have anyone wake him up for ever, Anders watched hungrily as Hawke went down on his knees, grinning like he knew how good he looked, pulling down Anders' breeches to his knees, pressing a lazy, rough lick over the leaking tip of his prick, clenching tight on the base, almost enough to hurt, and pulling up, all dry friction as he took the swelling head into his hot, wet mouth with just the faintest scrape of teeth. Anders shuddered, his hands clenched tight in the maroon jacket, toes curling as his breath hitched. “Andraste's bloody... where did you learn that?”

“From you,” Hawke grinned smugly up at him, rubbing the prickly edge of his bearded chin against his sensitive inner thigh, stroking his thumbs teasingly and lightly over tightening balls to the soft skin just beyond, his smirk widening when Anders whimpered and pulled urgently at short dark hair.

“More, please don't stop-”

“I haven't even shown you anything interesting,” Hawke said innocently, pushing him back and up against the wall, holding his hips still, and, as Anders watched, wide-eyed, swallowed him slowly and deliberately to the hilt.

Maker preserve his soul, a dream was going to kill him. Anders didn't realize he was holding his breath until Hawke chuckled around him, and he let it out with a hoarse cry, his knees going weak, but Hawke held him up even as he sucked lightly, teasingly, and drew back with a studied, wicked inexorability that made all his personal pride cede the way to desperate pleas. When Hawke purred on his way back down, again with that faint, delicious hint of teeth, Anders nearly came right there and then. Hawke didn't seem to have a gag reflex. This was, Anders decided, dazed, definitely the hottest thing he had ever seen. Thank the Maker that mages tended to remember what happened in the Fade.

When he finally ran out of words to beg, Hawke pushed all the way back down with a hum, sucking at him with a hungry, muffled moan, like Anders was the one doing this to him, and that was the end of Anders' fraying self control. His hips bucked forward as he braced himself shakily on broad shoulders, choking out a wrenching, raw cry as he spent himself down Hawke's willing, tight throat.

Slumping down slowly against the wall until he was sprawled boneless and fuzzy on his rump, Anders blinked as Hawke withdrew his left hand from his own breeches, the fingers wet with his seed, not self-conscious in the least that he had just come from having another man's arousal in his mouth. “Good?” Hawke's voice was a little hoarse, but still smug. And justifiably so.

“I could have done that for you,” Anders cleared his throat.

“Mm.” Hawke smirked at him. “We could move to the bed, and put your Grey Warden stamina to use.”

“How so?” The hungry edge to Hawke's tone was making his spent flesh twitch.

“Usually, at that point,” Hawke leaned forward, licking playfully at the edges of his mouth, rich with the scent of sex, fire and lightning, “You'll take me until I'm hard again. And then-”

“And then?” Maker help him, but he was definitely stirring, his desire thorny with a little pain; it was still too soon.

“Wait. There's someone here.” Hawke frowned, getting to his feet. “In my dream.”

“In your dream?” Anders repeated, with a blink, scrambling up, and suddenly, the world seemed to tilt, blurring away, and they were standing again in the foyer of the house. Hawke was dressed for battle, in his wolf's skin armor and his bladed staff, and Anders was back in his feathery coat and clothes, as though he'd never been up the stairway.

Standing before them was Merrill, a frowning, wary-looking Warden-Commander, and a boy who looked neither human or elvhen, his eyes too sharp for the former, and his anxious face too wide for the latter, dressed in rich, deep blue robes, trimmed with white fur.

“Feynriel,” Hawke's tension faded. “What are you doing here?”

“I had urgent news, so I drew the others into a single dream as you once suggested,” Feynriel said, then he looked slightly embarrassed, “But then I couldn't seem to draw you out of the dream I built to hold you while I tried to locate the others, and you'd pulled serah Anders into it when I lost control for a moment. Also, the Warden-Commander was fighting me,” he added, a little reproachfully. “He called me all sorts of names and tried to kill me. Merrill had to intervene. Once I had that sorted, I managed to get back in here.”

“I've apologized,” Surana said dismissively. “But you have to admit, usually intruders to the dreams of a mage tend to have claws, melting flesh and bad intentions.”

“Besides, it wasn't as though Hawke or Anders would have hurt each other,” Merrill added soothingly. “Look, they're both just fine. Also, I saved you from being hit on the head, didn't I?”

“He hit you on the head instead,” Feynriel retorted. “That wasn't nice at all!”

“Oh. So it wasn't a dream,” Hawke said, wide-eyed, just as it occurred to Anders with a sinking heart that Hawke wasn't a projection after all. He'd thought that something seemed... off. And still, they had... he had... Staring down at his feet, Anders wished for a brief, consuming moment that the ground would swallow him.

“How did he do that?”

Feynriel glanced at Anders, surprised. “But you do know, serah. I've written letters to you as well. I found a good mentor in Tevinter, someone with a lot of books about the somniari. I'm still learning, of course.”

“Forgotten magic,” Hawke told Anders, his cheeks a little pink, averting his eyes. “Feynriel has the ability to shape the Fade. It's a throwback. You're getting much better,” he told Feynriel. “To take so many dreamers into your dream.”

“It's a lot easier with mages – all of us already have one foot in the Fade when we dream.” Feynriel said, though he looked pleased with the praise. “I'm not very good at non-mages. Their dreams are fragile. I don't want to damage anyone's mind.”

“You're in Tevinter.” Surana said slowly, then he narrowed his eyes, glancing at Hawke. “He's your contact.”

“Indeed.”

“You could have told me what he was.”

“I don't trust you,” Hawke retorted, “I won't let you use my friends.”

Surana's fists curled slightly, and hastily, Anders cleared his throat. “Ah... that aside... you said you had news, Feynriel?”

“The dragon scale's in Marothius,” Feynriel wisely stepped away from Surana. “It's in the hands of a magister called Marius.”

“Marius. Part of the Archon's inner circle.” Surana pursed his lips. “It does not bode well.”

“What part about 'assaulting the Tevinter Imperium' bodes well?” Anders asked dryly.

“But not the Archon himself, and it has been quite some time since the scale regenerated,” Hawke cut in, ignoring the both of them. “This means that he must be hiding it from the Archon.”

“I knew there had to be something in Marothius. The assault against the Warden outpost there was brutal. We'd been tolerated before; usually, we station dwarven Wardens there. The Tevinters have an amicable relationship with dwarves,” Surana muttered.

“There's more,” Feynriel added nervously. “I couldn't get close enough to Marius' dreams – he has a lot of traps – but I managed to look inside those of some of his apprentices. Marius is going to use the scale to trace Lusacan. Apparently the Dragon of Night sleeps deep beneath Marothius, under even the Deep Roads. They've been clearing a way, excavating a tunnel through the rock. That's why the warden outpost had to go.”

“Whatever for?” Surana looked surprised. “He can't wake it.”

“The darkspawn taint the Old Gods by merging their group mind with them, apparently,” Feynriel said soberly. “Marius thinks that he has found a way to merge his mind with Lusacan's. He wants to become a God.”

Anders had woken up soiled, red-eyed and definitely late for the patrol, and had to scramble to clean up, dress and make a run for the reinforced door in double time. Somewhat to his relief, Hawke was nowhere to be seen, though Varric was evidently trying, with an obvious lack of success, to chat up Sigrun.

“I thought that you got assigned to scouting,” Anders told Sigrun, just as she began to start pointedly fingering one of her daggers.

“Ah. You're finally here. About sodding time,” Sigrun said sourly. “Nothing's happening on the surface, it got boring. And tell your ex's mouthy friend here to get lost.”

“Sigrun is most refreshing,” Varric told Anders, with a wide grin, even as the Wardens prepared to unbar the door. “She's unlike any dwarven lady I've ever met.”

Sigrun scowled. “I told you, I'm symbolically dead. Why bother?”

“So last night in the main hall was just you getting only figuratively drunk?” Varric held up both hands, palms up in surrender, when Sigrun bared her teeth. “It was only an observation. And I'm coming with you. Daisy and Hawke aren't yet awake, Carver is off on another patrol and the elf is in one of his Moods.”

“They aren't awake?” Anders frowned. “That's strange.” Feynriel had drawn his hands in a complicated design in the air, and Anders had promptly woken up. He'd assumed that this would have been the same for the rest of them. Turning to one of the Wardens at the door, he said, “Check on the Warden-Commander now, please. If he's awake, get him to look in on Hawke and Merrill. If they're all not awake yet...” he glanced at Sigrun, nibbling at his lower lip, “Come and find me in the Deep Roads.”

“What's wrong?” Sigrun held up a hand, and the Wardens at the door stopped.

“We might have had a little mage-only party in the Fade last night, courtesy of some half elf friend of Hawke's, and I'm not sure if I'm the only one who didn't get the hangover.”

“Oh. Feynriel.” Varric didn't look surprised. “Relax. Feynriel's harmless. Relatively speaking, anyway. He probably just wanted to catch up with Hawke and Daisy.”

“You could check on them, Tethras,” Sigrun said, a little too hopefully.

“They'll be fine. Besides, if something happens to Blondie here in the Deep Roads, things might be worse than them sleeping in for a day or so.”

Anders didn't see Sigrun move, but abruptly, she stepped back, and Varric blinked dumbly, staggered, and fell over, even as she rubbed at her wrist. “His jaw's as hard as stone. Blast. Drag him off somewhere out of the way to sleep it off, and check on the Warden-Commander,” she told one of the shocked guards. “What? If I had to go on patrol with that mouthy surfacer, I'll have started stabbing everything in sight. Be thankful.”

“I'm never, ever going to get on your bad side,” Anders decided, watching as two Wardens dragged Varric's body none too gently up against the wall.

Two hours into the Deep Roads, Sigrun kicked him in the shins. Yelping, and flinching aside, Anders demanded, “And where did you pick up that habit?”

“You're sodding distracted.” Sigrun said blandly. “Stop worrying. If you're all right, then the Warden-Commander will be fine.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Anders hadn't actually been worried about the Commander – which admittedly did make him feel faintly guilty. Hawke, on the other hand, had already shown himself very susceptible to dreams, and Feynriel had been living in the Tevinter Imperium for some time – he'd picked up an accent. Anders wasn't sure if Feynriel could truly be trusted. If Hawke was still in the Fade, Anders wasn't sure how he was going to get his hands on enough lyrium to follow him-

“You're doing it again.”

Anders stepped smartly out of the way before Sigrun could kick him. “Entering the Fade is difficult, if they're stuck.”

“The Commander's done it before, a few times.” Sigrun shrugged. “Oghren told me. He saved some child who was possessed.”

Anders had heard that before – Arl Eamon's son, at that. He'd never even thought such a feat possible, but the Warden-Commander tended to wildly defy reasonable expectations. “That's true.”

“Unless you're worried about your ex?”

“No! Why would I be worried about him?”

Sigrun made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snigger. “Why indeed. Do you know, there's a new bet going the rounds now that you messed up the first one?”

“Do I want to know what it's about now?” Did the other Wardens truly have so much free time on their hands?

“After the past couple of weeks and a bit, the bet's on how long the two of you will take to jump each other.”

“You mean, while awake?” Anders asked, then he groaned and pinched at the bridge of his nose. Damn this lack of sleep! “Please forget that I just said that.”

“Awake? Wait. What was this mage-only 'party' about?” Sigrun raised both her eyebrows. “And you were first one to finish and wake up? Figured. I knew all those stories you used to spread around the drinking halls were nugshit.”

“I... you... I'm not having this conversation with you,” Anders said flatly, scowling into the dark stretch of the Deep Roads before them.

“Wait till Zevran hears about this.” Sigrun sighed. “Blast. I knew I shouldn't have bet any coin against a sodding Antivan.”

“Please don't tell Zevran. It was a misunderstanding anyway.”

“Humans have managed to 'misunderstand' sex? Must be all that height,” Sigrun shook her head slowly. “Makes all of you too complicated. Wait. What's that?”

At the very edge of the darkness, from where the maintained Warden reinforced lanterns ended before the Deep Roads proper, was a severed human head.

Sigrun held out a hand, and Anders and the other two Wardens drew their weapons, looking around sharply, reaching out with their Grey Warden senses. Nothing. Sigrun crept forward, looking into the darkness, circling around the visible perimeter, then she trotted over to nudge the head over with her toe, revealing a pale, bearded face drawn in an extreme rictus of terror, as though hexed by a horror spell.

“Huh,” she said, grimly. “So much for the Nevarran Commander.”

Leaving Sigrun to brief the Warden-Commander, Anders found himself hurrying to the south wing once they returned to the Hundred Pillars outpost, expecting to see Hawke step out from behind a door or a pillar at any moment. The grisly find in the Deep Roads hadn't helped his growing anxiety; several times on the far too long trek back to the outpost, he'd found himself all but shaking from impatience.

It had been at least four hours, and the Warden-Commander, apparently, was awake; he'd also seen Merrill in the courtyard, puttering around watering the few, straggly plants that had crept up from under the flagstones. That meant that Hawke should have dropped out of the dream as well. In which case, why hadn't he at least tried to come for the patrol-

Anders stopped short, so quickly that the Warden walking behind him carrying a box of reports nearly tipped right into him. Several apologies afterwards, Anders was leaning out over the nearest open corridor, his hands clenched tight on the cracked stone rail, taking deep, slow breaths.

All right. He could be mature about this. Being worried about others was, admittedly, not part of the norm as far as he remembered, but he'd spent most of the first part of his life either in an effective prison or attempting to escape from it, and the rest of it that he remembered being dragged along into scrape after scrape by a group of highly competent Wardens. Granted, Hawke could take care of himself, but the Fade was a tricky thing. Especially for an apostate who wasn't Circle-trained, judging from what he'd gathered from all of Hawke's occasional attempts at small talk in the Deep Roads.

Slowing his footsteps to a walk, Anders climbed up another stairwell until he was in the south wing, then he took another, deep breath and walked into the entrance chamber, looking down the corridor to Hawke's room.

The mabari was still curled at its master's door. It barked when it saw him, and let out a low whine when he got closer. Frowning, Anders tried the door, with no success, and knocked, the festering sense of anxiety growing again. “Hawke? Hawke, are you in there?”

There was no answer, not even a sound. Hoping that all that he was about to do was to commit some minor property damage in the name of accidentally invading an empty room, Anders pressed his palms against the lock and concentrated a localised mind blast from his hands.

The lock sheared free with a wrenching moan of metal, and Anders stumbled into the room. Hawke was curled on the bed, his eyes closed, breathing slowly and evenly in sleep.

“No.” Anders grabbed Hawke's shoulders, shaking him. “Please no.” There were two mages in the outpost, Surana and Merrill – perhaps they would be enough; besides, the Dalish tended to have their own kinds of magic, their own practices regarding the Fade; Merrill might know what to do. “Wake up, Hawke!”

Hastily straightening up, Anders was about to run to fetch Merrill, when Hawke mumbled something behind him. Hawke was stirring, yawning and rubbing a palm over his face as he sat up, stretching and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Thank the Maker.

Anders didn't realize that he'd spoken until Hawke suddenly glanced at him, surprised. “What... Anders?”

“It's already the afternoon, and you hadn't woken up, so I thought...” Anders' voice trailed off under Hawke's slightly unfocused stare, the sleep-tousled hair that stuck out at all angles. “Never mind. You're fine. I'll go.”

“The afternoon?” Hawke yawned again, and ran his fingers through his hair, making the tousled mess worse. “I didn't think it'd take that long. I was curious about somniari magic and asked Feynriel to show me some of it. He can take people across dreams, into those belonging to other people, with no one the wiser. He's still not very good at the fine tuning, though, but it was quite intriguing.”

So it had been nothing more than a mage's usual sense of curiosity. “I'll, uh, go. You might want to find the Warden-Commander when you're, er, done cleaning up,” Anders added, when Hawke sat up further and instantly pulled a face.

“Shouldn't we talk?” Hawke said quietly, watching as Anders backed away towards the door.

“There isn't anything to discuss. There was a mutual misunderstanding, duly resolved, and just tell your friend to identify himself first before he tinkers with any more of my dreams,” Anders nearly tripped over the mabari on his way out, he'd backed off so quickly. He had to escape before he somehow managed to land himself in a further set of misunderstandings.

He'd had relationships before; short, secretive ones in the Circle, and briefer ones during his escapes, and one very ill-thought one while with the Wardens, and had long concluded that they tended to be far more trouble than they were worth. And Hawke was already far too much trouble even were they just friends, Anders felt – look at where he had dragged Merrill, Varric and the others, headlong into a battle not of their interest or making.

Instead of freezing Hawke's expression into a cold mask as Anders had expected, however, Hawke merely chuckled, still husky from sleep, leaning his unshaven cheek on his palm and his elbow on a knee. “So, you have that sort of dream often?”

“No,” Anders lied. “Not at all.”

“Not interested in a repeat performance outside of the Fade?”

Anders only barely managed to suppress a shiver, curling his nails tightly into his palms. “Do Fade-related misunderstandings always make you so perky?”

“There was a misunderstanding?” Hawke tilted his head. “I thought that I had made myself perfectly clear. Within the Fade and outside of it. I don't lie.”

Sweet Andraste, but Anders didn't doubt that. Steeling himself to sort out the problem once and for all, what Anders actually ended up saying was, “I, uh, I'll think about it.” Damn it all!

“Please,” Hawke smiled warmly, and Anders beat a hasty retreat. He had a weakness for pretty things. That was the blasted problem.

“Marius' forces have struck the first blow,” the Warden-Commander said, stabbing a gauntleted finger at the Hundred Pillars token on the large map in the command chamber, “But not the last. Sigrun and the other scouts in the Deep Roads have reported that he's been amassing part of his forces, marching them here. They must have ambushed Warden-Commander Tyr and his men on their way here. Sigrun?”

Sigrun pointed at a red token set between the Nevarran Deep Roads path and the Hundred Pillars. “There were bodies found here, all unrecognisable. Many mutilated with blood magic.”

Surana nodded. “As I thought. The severed head was a warning. He'll be expecting us to dig down, and recall Nathaniel and the others from the Silent Plains.”

“So we attack,” Hawke pointed at the Marothius token. “We won't accomplish anything waiting here.”

Surana shot Anders a significant glance, but he made a quick, half-shake of his head. If anything, the resulting fireworks were likely to be entertaining, as he previously thought.

“The Deep Roads is treacherous enough without having to war blindly with Tevinter magisters within it with no clear goal in sight,” Surana retorted. “With the forces we have now, we cannot retake Marothius.”

“Then what? We stay here, and let him kill us off slowly?” Hawke demanded. “And all the while he'll be digging closer and closer to Lusacan's body!”

“The darkspawn want that scale as well, and the other magisters,” Surana pressed a darkspawn token on the board, besides Marothius. “He won't send all of his forces against us. If only we could find out where his encampments are. Parts of the Deep Roads are quite mutable, especially with the number of dwarves we have that were recalled from Marothius. And where the other forces in play are. Blast!”

“You have us scouts,” Sigrun said, and crowded into the chamber, some of the other Wardens pressed against the wall for space also nodded.

“You know that the deeper into the Roads that you go, alone, however good that you are, it's still a death wish. And we need every Warden that we have. But we may have no choice,” Surana concluded, with a sigh. “We need to find out where his forces are, and quickly. If we can hit him hard, with traps, or divert some darkspawn into his path, we may be able to break through to Marothius.”

“And you'll be over-extended, bleeding Wardens all the way to flanking attacks,” Hawke disagreed. “I have another idea. Hit Marius' forces hard, in the Deep Roads, to concentrate them there. I will take the overland path to Marothius.”

Surana snorted derisively. “You and what army, Hawke?”

Hawke grinned, unafraid. “You know that an army will freeze to death and starve on the slopes. A small party of apostate refugees, on the other hand, might just make it.”

“Your party's not exactly very low profile,” Surana replied, though he pulled briefly and thoughtfully at his chin. “You have a templar, a Dalish elf, and some sort of lyrium-etched warrior.”

“I could just borrow someone else's armor,” Carver said, with a touch of irritation, then he glared at his brother when Hawke arched an eyebrow. “I'm going with you, brother. I've already come this far.”

“The smith in this outpost may be able to make some additions to my armor to cover my arms, and I could wear a helm,” Fenris sighed. “The things I have to do for you, Hawke.”

“Anything to kill a few magisters?” Hawke asked, with a touch of playfulness that put Anders' teeth on edge, somehow. Thankfully, however, Fenris only smirked, and said nothing, glancing away.

“I could wear other clothes as well, and one of those big cowls.” Merrill said, if a little unhappily. “By the Dread Wolf, it will feel so strange. I hope I don't meet any other Dalish on the way.”

“Somehow I'm a little insulted to realize that I'm the most 'low profile' of all of your friends, Hawke,” Varric said dryly, though he reached back briefly to rub a thumb over his crossbow's stock.

“Well then, that's settled,” Hawke told Surana decisively. “We'll set out to Marothius tomorrow.”

“You can't possibly agree with him,” Anders said sharply. “He'll die – they'll all die. Even if you somehow manage to concentrate Marius' attention on the Deep Roads, how is Hawke going to get to the scale? Or the tunnels? And surely Marius won't be so foolish to leave Marothius unguarded.”

“They're not Wardens,” Surana shrugged. “Hawke and his friends can do whatever they like.”

“Good to know that we finally see eye to eye on something,” Hawke said pleasantly, and Anders rounded on him with a growl.

“You can't be so reckless! The Wardens could be mired here for months, going in circles in the Deep Roads without...” Anders paused, frowning. “Feynriel. He could help, if you must persist in this insanity. If he could find out where the encampments were, and communicate this information, the Warden-Commander could strike with precision. He'll also know where the tunnels are.”

Hawke's expression froze for a moment before smoothing away, but it was long enough. Surana bared his teeth. “And you intended to withhold this from me?”

“I said that I wasn't going to let you use my friends.” Hawke snapped. “And-”

“Hawke, please,” Anders interjected. “This sort of information, it could save lives. And the more effective the Wardens are, the more likely that your way into Marothius will be easier.”

Hawke stared at him, for a grim, silent moment, then he seemed to waver, exhaling loudly. “You're right. I'll speak with Feynriel. If he wants to take the risk, I'll let you know.”

“I'll use the information well,” Surana promised, glancing down at the map. “We'll strike them hard. Maker willing, if we push them back to Marothius, then I will join you at the tunnels. There are mages in our outpost in the Silent Plains. If Feynriel could send word to the Architect and get his own forces to delay the darkspawn incursion to Marothius, that should be able to diminish any darkspawn threat.”

“I'll see what he can do,” Hawke said, guarded again, though he smiled when he extended a hand across the table. “Good hunting, Warden-Commander.”

Surana shook it firmly. “Good luck. I think that you will need it.”

When Anders finally managed to get Surana alone in the makeshift Warden-Commander office at the topmost floor of the outpost, it was already late in the evening. Surana looked tired, poring over a stack of reports and cross referencing them to another, smaller map on his desk, and he didn't look up when Anders sidled into the room. “You want to go with him.”

“I'm going to suspect you of blood magic at this rate.” Anders let out the breath that he had been holding.

“I'm surprised at you, Anders,” Surana said dryly, getting up from his seat. “Like you've said, Hawke's path will be fairly suicidal.”

“With Feynriel, I think that he has a chance.” Anders wasn't entirely sure – or honest – with himself why he wanted to go, he had to admit. Only that he knew that he wouldn't be able to bear watching Hawke walk away from the outpost tomorrow. And besides... “You need a Warden with him. You know that. In case the darkspawn manage to corrupt Lusacan. Or if... when we kill Lusacan, to prevent it from ever being corrupted. One of us needs to be there, to take it in.” And to die in the process, his mind supplied, but Anders shied away from that for now.

“It is not an easy thing to contemplate,” Surana admitted, flattening his palms on the map. “I would go with Hawke if I could. Rather than sending any of the men under my command. But for this ruse to work, I must be personally present at the Deep Roads, in battle. Have you told Hawke?”

“No. I thought that I should first clear it with my boss,” Anders said, as lightly as he could.

Surana wasn't easily distracted. “If he finds out why you want to go with him, he won't let you. Or any other Wardens who might offer.”

“That's why he won't hear it from me.”

“He does seem to have a considerable blind spot where you are concerned,” Surana admitted, with a deep sigh. “Are you sure of this, Anders? I could use you here. And you have only so very recently regained possession of your faculties. I won't hold it against you if you change your mind. Others have already volunteered.”

He'd thought that the Warden-Commander had had a remarkable number of appointments today. “You've said it yourself. He has a blind spot where I'm concerned.” It wasn't even going to be a lie, just a judicial withholding of the truth. “For anyone else, he'll probably make trouble.”

“It is your right as a Warden.” Surana said quietly. “Go then, if that is what you want. But, like I have said, I'm surprised,” the Warden-Commander added wryly. “What happened to the path of the least resistance?”

“Fireballed all to hell during the siege of Vigil's Keep,” Anders shot back. “Defending a castle against ridiculous odds tends to put one's mind in perspective. Also, your sense of duty is bloody contagious.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Hawke was sorting regretfully through his chests of personal effects when Anders entered his personal chamber. The door had been fixed, by a precise and obsessive hand (likely dwarven), and Hawke glanced up briefly when he opened it. “Anders.”

“You're packing?”

“We can't take everything. We'll have to travel light.” Hawke was fingering the portrait of a pretty woman, and he explained, when Anders glanced down at it, “My mother's portrait.”

“Oh.” Carver had said something about their mother – dead, it seemed. Anders was never very good at this sort of conversation, so he hesitated, uncertain.

“She liked you.” The portrait went back into the chests, and Hawke continued to rummage through it. “Strange. When we left Kirkwall, I thought that I had already pared everything down to what I wasn't willing to lose.”

“I'm surprised that you didn't have more,” Anders said, uncomfortably. This seemed to be one of those minefield moments, but he had to say something. “You could come back... afterwards. I doubt that the Hundred Pillars outpost will fall.” If they came back.

“I had more things to take along than you did,” Hawke replied, over his shoulder, then he hesitated. “Did you recognise-”

“I recognised most of my things, but not all of them. And there was this Tevinter Chantry amulet,” Anders shuddered. “Where did I get that?”

Hawke glanced at him thoughtfully, then he got to his feet. “I gave that to you. I thought that you might like it.”

“It's... nice.” Awkward. But he should have figured. Who else would be so blithely blind to what having a Tevinter Chantry amulet meant? “Other than the part where I might get killed if anyone ever found it on me.”

“You said that when I gave it to you as well,” Hawke said, amused and evidently unrepentant.

“It might be useful where we're going,” Anders allowed, without thinking.

Hawke, however, frowned at him. “'We're'?”

“Oh. Uh.” So much for all his carefully prepared dialogue. “I thought, well, maybe, you might need a Warden around anyway for the darkspawn sixth sense, once you get to the tunnels at Marothius, and...” At Hawke's sudden, growing smile, Anders had to look away. “Don't read too much into this.”

“Anders.” He nearly flinched when Hawke picked up his left hand, clasping it between roughened palms. “If you want to come with me, then it will be an honor to have you. Also,” he added, as an afterthought, “It saves me from trying to find a way to convince you to follow me.”

“You... really?”

“Seere was a mistake. I won't let you out of my sight again. You get into far too much trouble on your own.”

“You're the one dragging all of us into a war zone,” Anders pointed out, fighting a foolish grin. “I don't think you're in any position to criticize.”

Hawke stared at him for a moment, tilting his head, then he folded his arms. “Just so that we're clear, this isn't the result of an order from the Warden-Commander, is it?”

“No. He asked me to stay here, actually. We don't have any other mages in the outpost, and he doesn't have much interest or talent for healing magic.” He was on thin ice again; Hawke wasn't stupid.

“And you'll abandon the Wardens to come with me?”

“Apparently I've done it before over a cat?” Anders smiled tentatively, but Hawke merely arched an eyebrow, unconvinced. Reluctantly, Anders settled for low tactics. “I told you not to read too much into it. I want to come along. But if you don't want me to, then I won't.”

Hawke sighed out aloud, as though he was – Maker help him - used to this. “I hate it when you say things like that to me.”

“You'll probably soon find that I'm far more annoying than what I used to be. Whatever that was,” Anders usually found that attempting humor was a decent defense to things for which he didn't know how to respond. “I'll make inappropriate jokes. Irritate all your friends. Test unexpected potions on people.”

“If you truly wish to come along by your own choice, then you are welcome.” Hawke said, after another long, studied silence. “But if you don't-”

“The last time I was in a situation like this,” Anders interrupted, exasperated, “I was left behind. The Warden-Commander ran off to get himself killed – or so it seemed at the time – and left a group of the rest of us at Vigil's Keep. I don't want to get that feeling again. Not knowing whether your friends are dead, whether what you're doing right at that moment will still have meaning. I don't think that I can bear seeing you walk away tomorrow, not knowing whether you'll ever come back. Are you happy now?”

“But you don't want me to 'read into this'?” Hawke was stroking both his palms in circular, idle caresses up Anders' arms, and it frightened him a little that this had raised no red flags in his mind whatsoever. That amber-brown stare was hypnotic, almost predatory as Hawke leaned closer, lips parted, and Anders shivered as he closed the distance between them, wet and fumbled until Hawke dragged him closer, pulling him flush against him with a low moan. It seemed like sweet relief to growl and claw his hands into fists in Hawke's jacket and lick into his mouth, deepen the kiss until Hawke broke back with a low, choked curse, dragging him back until they tumbled on the bed.

This was a bad idea, Anders' rational mind tried to tell him, as Hawke rolled on top and kissed him again with a muffled, liquid snarl, straddling him-

Someone cleared their throat pointedly at the open door, and Anders hastily jerked back with an oath. Carver stood with his arms folded, grimacing. “You could refrain from giving everyone a show, big brother.”

“Just close the door, Carver,” Hawke told him, his tone uneven, though he grinned wickedly at Anders' expression of consternation when the door slammed shut. “Siblings.”

Thank the Maker for rude younger brothers. It was difficult enough having to face up to Hawke's questioning without adding further complications into the mix, and his self-control seemed to have been taken into a corner and gotten itself shot. Anders wriggled out from under Hawke gratefully. “I should go. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

Hawke reached out and pressed him back gently back down onto the bed. “Could you stay here tonight? You can get your things in the morning.”

Anders looked away quickly from Hawke's hopeful expression. “So you've decided that you're not actually using me?”

“Do you think that I am?”

“You're...” Anders hesitated, then admitted, reluctantly, “You don't seem capable of things like that.”

Hawke let out a short laugh, settling down on his flank on the bed. “You've always had a rather inflated opinion of my good character. Despite all evidence to the contrary. But no. I'm not.”

“I don't love you,” Anders said, in a whisper. “I don't know if I can. If I'm even really capable of it. In the Circle-”

“I know about the Circle. You've told me that it was something that the templars would use against you.” Hawke reached over to squeeze his left hand. “And I know that you're capable of it. As to the former,” he added, with that damnably tender smile, the one that made Anders' heart skip a beat whenever he saw it, however inadvertently, “I'm happy to keep working at it.”

“Must you always get your way?” Anders asked, a little facetiously, as Hawke balanced his weight with a palm splayed beside Anders' head.

“Always. Just so that you're aware, it usually frustrated you,” Hawke's lips curled into a quick grin, leaning close to slant their mouths together again, and this time, Anders found himself curling his arms around Hawke's neck and closing his eyes.

The mountain path that wound steeply down towards Tevinter was bitterly cold, and the winds felt like jagged fingers of ice dragged repeatedly over his spine, even wrapped up as they were, with a fur cowl pulled over his face. Merrill looked utterly miserable, sniffling at times as though she was coming down with a cold, and Varric looked like a movable, snow-covered ball that occasionally muttered curses when they moved into drifts of knee-deep snow.

Carver was silent, trudging before the dwarf to dredge a path, Fenris seemed unaffected by the cold, and Hawke was walking ahead, looking around with a seemingly endless curiosity at the sharp, jagged peaks, at the snow, and at the barren rock all around them. Wars had once been fought over possession of the mountain passes that led to Antiva, and on occasion they would find an old skirmish ground, still littered with bone fragments and shattered armor. Hawke would circle around excitedly, poking at random things with the end of his staff, while his hound barked and ran in circles around him, infected by its master's enthusiasm.

“He grew up in a tiny village in a boring part of Ferelden,” Varric muttered, by way of explanation. “I don't think he's used to this much snow. Didn't have much of it in Kirkwall. I hate the stuff.”

“We're not used to this sort of snow,” Carver confirmed sourly, from the front, “But you don't see me trying to frolic in it.”

“Junior, the day I see you frolic in anything is the day I shave off all my chest hair.”

“Don't tempt me,” Carver muttered as he walked faster to put a little more distance between them.

“So,” Varric turned to peer up at Anders, “I imagine you have questions? Ask away.”

“Questions? About what?”

“I don't know, the last six years of your life? Kirkwall? Your fascination with feathery gear? Hawke? You can't be entirely incurious.”

“I'm not sure that I want to know about the last six years of my life,” Anders shuddered. He wasn't entirely sure what was worse, becoming Tranquil, or being warped slowly over time by something seemingly more insidious than a demon. At least the usual, run-of-the-mill abomination tended to be easily recognisable, and therefore, easily disposed of by templars or Warden-Commanders.

“Oh, come on. There were good times. Diamondback games in the tavern-”

“I'm not good at diamondback,” Anders said suspiciously.

“You were tipsy, and it was strip diamondback. You know,” Varric explained, at Anders' frozen expression, “Where when you lose a hand, you take off a piece of-”

“In the tavern?” Admittedly, it probably wasn't the worst or most exhibitionist thing he'd ever done while drunk that he could remember.

“At my suite. You tried to insist that every feather on your coat was a separate token after your fourth beer.”

“I thought that was reasonable,” Merrill piped in, and sneezed. “Ohh. Must it be so cold?”

Anders grimaced. “And who won?”

“Isabela was doing well, but we never got around to any real conclusion. It turns out that Hawke over there is an angry drunk. Once you got yourself down to your small clothes, we had to stop the game or risk serious property damage.” Varric gestured in Hawke's direction. Their Great Leader was peering precariously down a narrow chasm in the ground, occasionally pushing rocks into it.

“Is he usually like that, though?”

“Always tinkering with things to see what would happen? It used to drive you crazy.”

“Did it?” It seemed fairly... endearing, so far.

“Sometimes things explode,” Merrill explained. “Actually, they usually do.”

“Oh.” That was something to keep in mind.

Varric glanced over at Hawke as he ambled further down the winding path, forcing Fenris to trot to keep up. “So, you and Hawke. Again.”

The motley group didn't seem to notice that they were even doing it, but so far, Anders noted that at least one of them tended to stay in range to keep an eye on Hawke. Possibly protectiveness, or possibly because things going boom on a snow-covered mountain tended not to end well. Either way, he felt a little like an outsider; it was evident that Hawke possessed their loyalties, even as they had his.

“'Again'?”

“I'm writing the Continued Adventures of the Champion of Kirkwall,” Varric supplied blandly. “How did you and Hawke get together this time? You didn't want to tell me how you got together the last time, so I made it up. Hawke found the story funny, you didn't. It's unlikely that the status quo will change. So. Care to provide details?”

“You're a very strange dwarf,” Anders frowned. “Most of the dwarves I've met tend to be smiths, shopkeepers or-”

“Wardens?” Varric grinned. “You're not exactly seeing the best of us, then.”

“Sigrun certainly thought so.”

“That girl can pack a remarkable punch,” Varric said regretfully. “Are you sure that she's single?”

“I never said anything about her being single or anything. Besides, she thinks she's dead. Talking to her about that always gives me a headache.”

“Being underground for most of your life gives you strange preconceptions,” Varric shrugged. “It did for my brother. Maybe after all of this I'll go back and look her up.”

Anders wasn't sure if he wanted to watch or be somewhere far out of range if that happened. “She'll kill you. Or worse.”

“That's part of the fun.”

The gates of Marothius were heavily guarded and barred; outside, a group of milling, protesting merchants were arguing ineffectively with the guardsmen. Anders wasn't very good with the Tevinter speech due to the grammar differences, and could only pick up snatches of words – it seemed that the city was under martial law, at present, due to the order of Magister Marius with the seal of the Archon.

The Tevinter Chantry amulet, worn by Carver over his borrowed black armor, cleared the way quickly – people were scrambling to get out of his path, and Hawke's brother could really strut like he owned the place. At the gate, even the guardsmen in their half face masks straightened uneasily at his approach, the lieutenant taking a step forward to address them in the Tevinter tongue, glancing warily at the amulet and at the strange blade at Fenris' back. A Blade of Mercy, Fenris had called it. Ironic name.

Carver jerked his chin at Fenris, who thankfully, in a full set of armor that covered his ears, looked only like a shorter, slimmer human. The elf retorted something harshly in return, gesturing at their party, then pointing imperiously at the gate. When the lieutenant disagreed, raising both palms in a pleading gesture, Fenris snarled, shoving the poor guardsman roughly until he overbalanced heavily onto his back.

The other guards drew their blades, and at a gesture from Fenris – the elf reaching up to rub at his left shoulder plate – Carver strode forward, and Anders had to grit his teeth at the glow of lyrium-fueled force from his bared fists as the guards were abruptly flung outward like so many dolls. A 'holy' smite. Anders had never thought that he would see the day when that would turn useful. Behind them, the merchants squawked and cried out in fear, scrambling to get away.

The guards dragged up their lieutenant, cowed and huddling behind their hapless leader as he called out to the guards behind the gate, and as it creaked open just enough to let them through, Anders noticed that Hawke relaxed his grip on his staff. They were in.

Marothius was silent, a ghost of a city, and as they walked through the gates into the empty market square beyond, Anders noted bloodstains, poorly scrubbed, staining the cobblestones against an overturned stall, the fruit rotting in the winter sun. The citizens seemed to be keeping indoors, doors and windows barred, and the effect was... eerie. Worse, in some ways, than even the Arlathan forest; the sense of rank fear was making the hair stand on the back of his neck. Anders didn't doubt that the normal people likely were fully justified in their terror. As small as the Warden outpost had been, the Wardens had fought fiercely when excised, and it was no secret that the Tevinter magisters experimented with blood magic when faced with difficult foes.

A servile, fawning guard led them to the Chantry – or what was left of it. It looked as though it had been empty for some time – the main door was ajar, and the hinges twisted with thick cobwebs. Shattered windows had been boarded up poorly, and shafts of broken sunlight mottled the dusty, rotting maroon carpet under the empty benches. Carver gestured at the door curtly when they entered the Chantry, and the guard left hastily, all but scrambling over himself to get out.

Fenris closed the door, and glanced out of the nearest, boarded window, holding up a palm, even as Hawke padded over to inspect the pew and the open, abandoned books around and upon it.

“Marothius' Chantry has been abandoned for months,” Fenris said finally, if in a low tone, when he looked away from the window. “The last templars stationed here had a collective...accident, when Marius took control of Marothius' seat of power. Danarius always had suspicions about the situation.”

“I thought that the magisters didn't have problems with the Tevinter templars.” Carver said, a little puzzled.

“Weakened as they are, and however token, the Black Divine and his templars here do serve a similar purpose, where necessary. And as you saw from the reactions of the people at the gates, they are feared. Marius' cousin was executed by a templar. He has a long memory. Danarius mentioned that. He said that Marius was foolish. However long Marius may hold a grudge, the Black Divine has a longer memory still.” Fenris looked around the Chantry, running his clawed gauntlet over the thick dust on a bench. “I have never been in one of these places. Nor did I ever think that I would return to the Imperium willingly. You take us to the strangest places, Hawke.”

“I don't know,” Hawke said dryly, flipping through a book at the pew, “Give or take a few curtains, some extensive pest extermination and some cushions and this place will be homely.”

“The guards will have gone to fetch Marius. He will suspect something, but he will not be able to confirm our status without sending word to the Archon and the Black Divine. We have a window of time.” Fenris continued to circle the building, glancing out through every slit in the boarded windows out of apparent habit. “What next, Hawke?”

“I'm thinking.”

“Don't tell me that you dragged us all here without an additional follow-on plan,” Anders groaned.

“You'll get used to it. Again,” Carver said morosely.

“Oh, I think it makes life more exciting,” Merrill quipped, though she sneezed, and sniffled again, with a wet sigh.

“There'll just be a big, big dragon at the end of all this. Mark my words.” Varric dusted off a bench and settled gratefully onto it. “My poor feet. Dwarves aren't meant for all that mountain climbing. Seriously, though. We might have gotten past the gate, but I don't think we'll be able to fool them for long. Daisy's obviously Dalish on closer inspection, and you, Junior and Blondie all look Fereldan. Not to mention the mabari hound? Obvious clue there.”

The dog barked, wagging its tail and panting at its master's side, and Hawke glanced up reluctantly from the book. “Well, depending on how good Fenris is at our current ruse, we might even be able to convince Marius to take us to look at the tunnels. We kill him, fight our way out with the scale-”

“-and get murdered before we can leave the city,” Anders pointed out. “Good plan.”

“Nobody's going to get killed,” Hawke replied, turning a page. “Don't worry. I won't let that happen.”

“I'll try to keep the ruse going,” Fenris said, if with a trace of doubt, then he chuckled, barking and harsh. “At the very worst, I'm happy to take on a magister or two.”

He might not have a choice, Anders felt. There was a faint but ugly twisting sensation within him, as though he was on a cusp of some betrayal; however warranted. “What about Lusacan? If Marius has already been tunnelling down to him, we could finish the job. If we can get rid of Lusacan, then that's one less possible Blight.”

This time, Hawke looked up sharply, with a frown, but Varric merely sighed. “There, see? A dragon at the end of it all.”

“He might not have reached... wherever the Old God is sleeping,” Carver said doubtfully. “Could be miles of rock yet, for all you know. But if we could, I'm up for it. I lost my sister to the darkspawn. If I could pay it back with interest, I will.”

“Be quiet. There's someone coming,” Fenris said abruptly. Sure enough, soon there was a hesitant knock on the door.

Fenris strode over, opening it to show the lieutenant again, who bowed deep this time, speaking in a placating, fawning tone. Fenris retorted in a sneering voice, and glanced back at Carver. Hidden from the lieutenant by his body, he tapped his finger lightly against the greaves at his leg, twice for yes. On cue, Carver nodded derisively, and the lieutenant bowed deep again, backing away as Fenris slammed the door in his face.

Once he was sure that the guard was gone, Fenris said, “And there you have it. An invitation from Marius to dine with him on the morrow, once we are rested and settled. No doubt he will use the time to try and get a message to the Archon.”

“Or he might try and kill us in our sleep,” Varric pointed out. “If Danarius was right about him and the accident, he might not bother to try and check. He'll hope to get rid of us quickly, and then act all innocent and surprised when the enquiry comes.”

“True,” Fenris said grimly. “Then we'll have to be ready for him.”

“We're tired from the trek. We'll eat, rest and take turns to keep watch,” Hawke closed the book. “Let's see which rooms are habitable and whether there's some sort of back entrance. We'll move some of these benches to form choke points. The building's solid, and defensible.”

As the others moved to obey – Carver and Fenris moving the benches, Merrill and Varric setting off to check out the doors beyond the pew, Hawke approached him and drew him aside to the far corner of the hall. Quietly, he said, “So you are here on Warden business.”

“Does it matter?”

“I thought...” Hawke combed his gauntleted fingers curtly through his short hair, and let out a short, harsh breath. “Talking to you, I can never tell what is truth and what is a half truth, or an outright lie.”

“I wanted to come with you, through no dictate by the Warden-Commander. That much is true. But do I also want to try and prevent a sixth Blight before it can begin? Yes I do. You don't need to be a Warden to want that. You've seen first hand how much suffering the Blights cause.”

Hawke narrowed his eyes. “You could have just told me that there was Warden business from the start.”

“Then we wouldn't have left. You'll just have run off to argue with Surana and you'll be arguing still at this very point, I suspect. Everything I told you was still true. But I have-”

“Other priorities? I know what that's like from you. I want to trust you,” Hawke said, low and fierce, “But you make it so bloody difficult for me.”

“I'm not asking you to come along,” Anders folded his arms. “I'll help you get the scale and destroy it if we can. If the tunnels are open, if Lusacan is reachable, then I'll take my leave.”

“And you think that I'll let you go alone against an Old God and a possible army of darkspawn?”

Hawke was growing angry; Anders could feel the static again, the thick invisible blanket of power, and he had to clench his fingers into his palms to keep from shivering at the thrill. Maker help him, but it was like standing in the middle of a storm, waiting to be swept away in the wildness of its strength. “The Old God is asleep and the army of darkspawn may not be there.”

A muscle twitched in Hawke's jaw, then the mage had his wrist in an iron grip, dragging him away so sharply that Anders stumbled heavily against a bench with a yelp of protest, pulled helplessly behind Hawke as he stormed through the doors behind the pew, looking around sharply, at the doors lining the narrow corridor, then dragging Anders through the first one and kicking the door shut behind them.

It was some sort of scribe's workroom. A heavy, wooden desk with a slanted face and a narrow ledge sat against a boarded window, and the shelves of books were still neatly in place, though the vellum weighted at the desk was long curled and yellowing, the inkwell in its circular holder affixed to the desk long dried, the quills scattered on the dusty ground. Before Anders could reproach Hawke for the rough treatment, or make some sort of protest, he was shoved up against the door and kissed deeply, possessively, tongue thrusting into his mouth until he was whimpering for it, clawing blindly at the complex straps and buckles that made up Hawke's outlandish armor.

It seemed to take eternity before their clothes lay discarded on the dusty ground, and Hawke had him pinned on their heavy cloaks, biting and kissing him until his lips were swelled and mauled. Anders ran his hands feverishly over Hawke's lean body, palming the ridges of old scars, stroking over narrow hips to squeeze at the firm rump, until Hawke growled thickly in his ear, one of his hands sandwiched between their bodies, slick from spit, clever, long fingers encircling both their arousals and rubbing them together, all raw, desperate friction.

“Hawke,” Anders choked out, and Hawke let out a low, inarticulate sound, something like anger, something like grief, and rolled him onto his chest, biting down hard on the back of his neck when he whined at the loss of grinding friction, and whimpered when Hawke bit him again as he arched up in an attempt to rub his arse against Hawke's cock. Maker, but Hawke was acting like he was going to take him on the floor like this, like two animals rutting, and he wanted it, his own arousal beginning to throb between his thighs.

Instead of fingers breaching him, however, Hawke bit him lower, over his spine, then lower still, and even when he pressed a lick over his cleft and spread his thighs, then his cheeks, Anders couldn't quite connect all of the dots in his disbelief. Hawke was going to... he wasn't seriously about to... When the flat of Hawke's tongue pressed hard against the twitching pucker of muscle, Anders was vaguely aware over the roar of blood in his mind that he was letting out a noise that was rather embarrassingly like that of a breathless squeal.

Hawke chuckled, an edge of his evil humor returning, cruel man, and the next lick was teasing and light, and the next, until he was babbling, stumbling over his own words as he begged, almost sobbing from want. “Please... Hawke pleaseMakerplease-”

“What's the hurry?” Hawke purred, with a nip over his inner thigh that made him moan and twist his fingers into their cloaks, then he cried out again as Hawke began to lick into him, slow, deliberate thrusts of his wicked tongue that made Anders shiver uncontrollably, his toes curling, pushing up desperately into Hawke's mouth until a rough hand pulled in a long, gritty stroke over his arousal and he was shaking to pieces, with a pitchy shout, spilling over Hawke's fingers.

Dazed, trying to control his breathing, Anders bit down on a gasp as now-slicked fingers pressed confidently into him, spreading him with just enough impatience for him to tell how close Hawke himself was to the edge. Strong hands pulled him gently onto his flank, then pulled his right leg over Hawke's broad shoulders, opening his thighs wide as Hawke braced a his left palm against the cloaks and pushed inside with a shaky breath, spit and come not quite enough to entirely smooth the way. The friction felt glorious. Dimly, he could hear Hawke whispering to him, bent over him and waiting for him to adjust, sweet desperate nothings that he couldn't quite make out and wasn't truly sure if he regretted that. Then Hawke began to move, and nothing else seemed to matter, in slow, rolling snaps of his hips that made his spent flesh stir, all too soon, a coiling twist of sensation nearly akin to pain.

He reached down to touch himself, and Hawke pinned his wrist deftly to the cloaks. “Don't.” Again, that mischievous, lopsided grin, when Anders moaned in wordless complaint. “I'll sate you. But by my rules.” When Anders frowned up at him, trying to find the words to protest this, Hawke shifted and moved and that was perfect; Anders tried to grind back down, desperate, but he was pinned. He didn't know how long they spent like this, lost count of how many times he was pushed past the knife's edge of ecstasy.

Later, utterly spent and curled around each other, Anders muttered, hoarsely, “This was reckless. We could have been attacked.”

“I'm sure that the others can handle a few thugs,” Hawke said blithely, stroking an idle, possessive palm down Anders' ribs as he pressed a kiss to Anders' forehead. Exhausted, they lay in companionable silence, until Anders began to doze, slipping away into sleep. He could hear Hawke chuckling softly again, from a distance, this time wryly, and whispering a promise, a confession, into his ear, like an old habit, or a candle lit briefly against the inevitable.

The streets were still empty and silent in the morning when a troop of guards dressed in ceremonial armor, all black enamel and gold trim, arrived to collect them. It was an uncomfortable trek through the ghost city towards the towering spires of the Inner Sanctum set in the heart of the city, Marothius' seat of power. The guards made no attempt to engage any of them in conversation, thankfully enough, and the only one of them that made the occasional noise was the mabari hound, which snuffed at the ground at times or growled whenever a guard moved too close to its master.

The courtyard to the Sanctum was heavily guarded, ringed by archers perched on the high walls around them and patrols of guards pointlessly circling empty space. Unnerved, Anders didn't realize how close he was walking to Hawke until a hand squeezed his briefly and reassuringly, almost making him jump. Hawke pulled away when he glanced over, and Anders swallowed a sigh. The morning had been awkward and tense, and the comments from the others – particularly the snide one from Carver about old habits – hadn't particularly helped matters.

At least having healing magic meant that he didn't have to limp around for the rest of the day – Maker knew what Varric would say next. Wondering how he was going to salvage things, Anders didn't see the guard beside him move until he had a damp cloth pressed hard against his nose. He recognised the scent immediately – laudanum - even as his sight blurred and he staggered back. Someone shoved him, and he fell hard enough on his side to knock the breath from him, the world tilting, growing hazy as he fought the drug, watched Merrill get dragged down as well, a guard slamming the pommel of his blade hard against the back of Varric's head. He could hear Hawke saying something, shouting, though he couldn't make out the words before the world went gray, then black.

When he came to, his mind felt as though it had been stuffed tight with cotton, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. There was cold stone against his back and his wrists were strung up in iron cuffs above his head. Blinking, trying to clear his vision, he managed to look to his left and right. The others were chained in a row with him, against the face of a high-ceilinged, dark cavern, the only light from a guttering torch at what looked like a recently chiseled entrance to Anders' right. Merrill was still unconscious, as was Carver, slumped in their chains and bruised, and the mabari hound was shackled and muzzled beside Carver's feet.

“You're awake,” Hawke said, to his left, sounding relieved. “Are you all right?”

“You mean, other than being chained up in a cavern?”

“He has a point, Hawke,” Varric said, a little indistinctly, further to the left, and spat. “Shit. I think I've lost a tooth. And I have a splitting headache. If I get my hands on that bastard who hit me, I'll shove Bianca up his arse before I pull the trigger.”

“I knew we shouldn't have trusted the magisters,” Fenris muttered, tugging ineffectively at the chains, then growling and glowing blue for a brief moment. Eerie. “I should have warned you.”

“You've warned me many, many times, Fenris. I was the one who was careless.” Hawke narrowed his eyes as though in concentration, then he frowned up at the chains. “There's some sort of... drain. I can't seem to cast anything.”

“The Imperium has mages for slaves, as well,” Fenris said flatly. “There's a drug that they make you breathe in. Dampens your abilities for a while. Keeps the slaves docile.”

Hawke uttered a filthy curse, then he sighed. “I'm sorry, Fenris. Everyone. I was reckless. Unbelievably careless.”

“Confessions from you about recklessness, Hawke? I think we must have died and gone to the afterlife already,” Varric said, all gallows humor. “Come on. We've been in worse scrapes than this before. That High Dragon? That crazy Knight-Commander with the lyrium idol?”

“We weren't chained up and helpless during all those times,” Fenris pointed out.

“Well, forgive me for looking on the bright side,” Varric sighed. “I'm not sure what happens when people try to use a dwarf in blood magic. Maybe things will explode spectacularly.”

“Dwarves aren't immune to blood magic,” Fenris shot back.

“And there you go again, Elf. I'm trying my best here to cheer the others up.”

Anders ignored their bickering, watching Hawke. The other mage alternated between grimly tugging at his chains and leaning his head back against the cavern, his teeth clenched. Had the drug not been administered, Anders had no doubt that the room would likely be on fire. “Hawke...”

“You were right. About the sort of trouble that I get into.” Hawke said quietly, with a harsh, back of the throat sound, wounded.

“If I had the choice all over again, I would still come with you,” Anders disagreed. “I want you to believe that.”

“You would?” Hawke blinked at him. “Anders, I-”

“Oh, now I'm depressed.” Carver grunted, having evidently woken up and noticed their situation, then he frowned at his brother. “What?”

“Nothing.” Hawke glanced up at Carver's chains. “A little help here? From the templar in the family?”

“Templars aren't miracle workers, big brother,” Carver scowled. “Why don't you break out of your shackles with your precious magic?”

“Someone's coming,” Fenris cut in, even as Hawke drew in a deep breath, and sure enough, Anders could hear footsteps, approaching, the heavy clinking tread of armor. Guardsmen filed into the room, against the opposite wall, and then a mage entered, flanked by two cowled, female apprentices. Magister Marius was richly robed in purple and red, a small, ornate golden case in his hands, his cowl pulled back to show an ascetic face that could perhaps once have been considered comely, pulled now in harsh angles and seared with deep lines of cruelty against the lips and the edges of his eyes, his gaze cold and reptilian as he swept it over them.

Fenris snarled something in the Tevinter tongue, but Marius merely glanced briefly at him, before looking back at Hawke and speaking in passable, if heavily accented common. “Uriel Hawke. The Champion of Kirkwall. Your brother and yourself proved most... costly to subdue, in terms of the lives of my men. And you must be Anders,” Marius turned his unsettling stare on him. “The mage who set the rest of Thedas aflame. Curious. What business do you have in Marothius?”

“We were just passing through?” Hawke suggested, though the humor didn't quite reach his eyes or the thin line of his mouth.

“With a templar at your side, posing as one of the Imperial Chantry... a dwarf, a Dalish mage... and I know of you,” Marius reached forward, jerking the helm off Fenris' head, his mouth curling slightly at the elf's look of venomous hatred. “Danarius' favorite pet. You are worth your weight in gold, Fenris. A pity that I have other uses for all of you.”

“I killed Danarius,” Fenris growled, seething, “And I will rip out your heart as well.”

“I've heard of that little trick,” Marius said, unimpressed. “Danarius did have such strange propensities.”

“Where is the scale?” Hawke demanded. Anders had to admire his single-mindedness.

“Here.” Marius tapped at the golden box. “I am so close to my goal. So close. The lives and the souls of all the wretched citizens of Marothius were insufficient. All of my very best apprentices, insufficient! But I am close. So close. And now luck has poured you all into my grasp, just as She predicted. One of the most powerful mages in Thedas... two other mages of fair strength, one with a demon within her... a templar, and an elf whose very skin is etched with lyrium. Your lives should be enough to tip the scale.”

“I feel so included,” Varric muttered.

“Delay Gaius' advance,” Marius instructed his guards. “To the last man if you must. Now, leave us.”

The guards nodded, woodenly as one, and filed out of the chambers, even as the apprentices behind Marius raised their lanterns and walked silently to their left, deeper into the cavern.

“You've found Lusacan, then?” Anders asked, trying to fight the drugs, the drain on his abilities. Just one winter's grasp and he could be free-

“I have.” Marius said, with a mocking tone, stepping into a circle of runes etched onto the stone with what looked like layers of dried blood, carefully painted. Charming. “He is here.”

The apprentices raised their lanterns, and the light fell against the wall of the end of the chamber. Frowning, Anders looked at the oddly even pattern, like a paving stone up the wall, before realizing, with a growing sense of dull astonishment, that they were scales, and by the ridging pattern, that curved in a shallow arc across the width of the cavern-

“Maker, that's the biggest bloody dragon I've ever seen,” Varric breathed. “Is that all just its eye? It could eat all the other dragons we've ever met for breakfast. All at the same time.”

“You look upon an Old God,” Marius said, with a sweeping wave of his hand. “Thedas' past – and now, Thedas' future.”

The apprentices placed the lanterns carefully on the ground, and glided up to the magister even as he drew a black dagger from his robes. The first apprentice made no sound as the knife slammed into her heart, twitching as she slid off the blade, and the other made only a soft sigh before she slumped down, in an unmoving heap. Marius tossed the knife to his side, and raised his palms, one facing them, one towards Lusacan, muttering in an alien, sibilant tongue that sounded like nothing that Anders had ever heard.

He could feel the magic tugging at his mind, twisting at it, as the golden box rose from Marius' hands floating between him and Lusacan's body, opening, a black amulet floating out from it, and someone – Hawke – was snarling beside him; he could hear Merrill moaning, low and helpless, the dog whimpering, Fenris shouting some sort of imprecation- he was going to die here, in the dark, without accomplishing what he was meant to do, and – Hawke was looking at him, the desperate anger in his eyes ceding to resignation, then to that heartbreaking look of tenderness, farewell-

Then the pull stopped, so suddenly that Anders slumped bonelessly in his chains, gasping for breath, barely able to raise his head. There was a tutting sound, loud in the sudden silence in the cave, the sound of cloth and scale.

“You've called quite loudly enough, child. I am here.”

Anders could only stare. A tall woman stood between Marius and Lusacan where the amulet had been, her hair bone-white and swept into odd, horn-like shapes behind her head, wrapped in deep red ribbons. Her face was lined with age, if yet beautiful under the coronet that she wore, but he could not immediately place how old she truly was. She was dressed in a form-fitting leather and scale armor, with black feathers at her shoulders and sashes at her supple waist, high boots hugging her long legs, her eyes bright amber and dancing with dark humor.

“Asha'bellanar!” Merrill said, astonished. “How...?”

With a roar of fury, Marius drew up his palm, and a translucent sphere of energy surrounded him. “How dare you, witch? I have already paid you in full for your information! How dare you interrupt my ritual?”

“Small little minds, all twisted by the third of the children,” Asha'bellanar shook her head, as though in pity, stalking forward, her hips swaying, fire and ice sleeting away around her as she ignored Marius' spells. “You've already served your purpose, child. Quite admirably.” Abruptly, her hand shot out, punching through the sphere of energy as though it didn't exist and closing tight around Marius' throat, and with no apparent effort, crushed it. "Now I am two fragments of a whole."

“What are you?” Fenris asked, a little numbly.

“You've asked me that selfsame question when we first met, and I would answer the same way.” Asha'bellanar tossed Marius' corpse aside and turned to glance at Hawke, with a faint smile playing at her full lips. “Would you hazard a guess?”

“You're the last fragment. That trick where you can turn into a dragon – that's it,” Hawke said, slowly. “You're part of Lusacan!”

“Only in the slightest sense,” Asha'bellanar smiled. “But it is enough. A very, very long time ago, a woman offered me a deal, for a little power; a way out from Uthenera. I rode with her, for a while, until she had what she wanted, and then it amused me to take over and play at being mortal. All debts are now paid in full.”

“Tell me, was this what you intended all along? You must have seen many ogres in your travels. Many humans defeating them. Why did you save us?”

“You are one of those rare souls, child, who stand outside Fate itself,” Asha'bellanar purred. “Any one with a third eye could see that. An utter waste, for your kind to die to the darkspawn, for you are the catalysts, the only souls from whose spark, when touched by a little of the oldest magic of all, sunders the curse laid upon the Elder Kind. I thought that I might play a long game, to see how it all ends. I'm glad that my faith in you has been amply repaid.”

“So you're both friends?” Anders asked, a little hopefully. “Little help with the chains?”

Asha'bellanar turned her knowing gaze upon him. “So that you'll try and kill me, Grey Warden? Does your lover know what will happen if you do? Your kind are made for one purpose, the destruction of the darkspawn, of the Archdemons that bring the Blight. Kill one of us, corrupted or not, and our soul transfers down the cursed leash to the Grey Warden who strikes the deathblow. Two souls in one body extinguishes them both.”

“Anders,” Hawke said, wide-eyed. “Is that true?”

Anders couldn't bear to meet his eyes. “That was in the cards.”

“Despite that, I'll spare your lives, for the service that you have rendered me, however inadvertently, through fate or chance,” Asha'bellanar stalked over to Lusacan's body, running a palm lovingly over the scales. “Send you out of range before I wake myself up.”

“What are you going to do?” Carver demanded, pale.

“Your kind bicker and war over words and old stories,” Asha'bellanar said, her voice growing deeper, slower, inhuman as her form blurred, gold threads of light swirling up around her. “I will show you power.”

The world smudged away, and Anders stumbled facefirst into a drift of snow. Around and behind him, the others cursed or exclaimed in astonishment as they picked themselves up; they were back on the Hundred Pillars, on the edge of a cliff within sight of Marothius, fist-sized in the valley beneath.

A sudden tremor shook Anders off his feet and sent Varric rolling against a rock with a yelp, then he backed quickly away from the edge of the cliff as the ground began to shake. Far away, Marothius seemed to be cracking up, deep fissures running in jagged spokes that centered on the spired building of the Inner Sanctum, then the ground burst upwards in chunks of rock and debris.

“Holy shit,” Varric breathed, as a massive, black-scaled dragon dragged itself out from the smoking crater where Marothius once was, shaking itself out and spreading its wings, as it spat a gout of blue flame into the sky. Then it leaped ponderously up into the air, and with an impossible, joyous flip and arch of its wings, lifted itself upwards and away towards the horizon.

Stunned, no one spoke for a long moment, staring at the ruin of Marothius, even as Lusacan slowly became a speck in the distance, then disappeared.

“I don't think,” Anders said shakily, in a small voice, “That I'm going to enjoy explaining this to my boss.” Surana was never going to believe that it wasn't his fault.

“You have other things to explain.” Hawke said flatly. “But we should first return to the outpost. The Warden-Commander needs to know what has transpired.”

“We must inform the other Warden-Commanders,” Surana said, after a long, stunned silence, dragging his palm up over his face. “Maker save us all. Flemeth – Lusacan – has played us like a lute.”

“She has?” Hawke was pacing by the window in the Commander's office, his features drawn tight with suppressed anger.

“By your description, I have met her before – in at least two of her forms. I slew Flemeth – or thought I did once – on her daughter's behest. Years ago, Lusacan in her white-haired form presented herself to me in Vigil's Keep, calling herself Setheneran, and I did not recognise her for what she was. She told me of the existence of the scale. She has been sending me letters since, now and then, over the years; remarkably accurate information about the campaigns that we waged to acquire the scale. I was suspicious at first, but she seemed like a benign, if mysterious benefactor. Her last letter recommended very strongly that I call you to the Hundred Pillars. She even told me what to tell you in order to convince you to come, what to describe in my 'dream'.”

“What do we do now?” Hawke glared out of the window at the snow-capped peaks beyond.

“You and your friends should rest. The drain of the blood magic on yourselves – it shows. You're all exhausted.” Surana flattened his palms on the table. “Marius' forces have fled. I will contact the other Commanders. We must prepare ourselves for whatever might be coming. I have friends in the Chantry and the Seekers. They should also be notified. The wars fought over Thedas now between the broken Circles and the Orders, they may soon seem petty.”

With that grim final thought, Anders silently sidled out of the command room, heading back to the infirmary. He had done all he could for those in immediate need before he had been called to the command room for the debrief. Built for siege, the infirmary was larger than the one in Vigil's Keep, and every bed was full. Even with Feynriel's advice, the battles had been costly.

Anders was trembling with exhaustion by the time he reached the last set of patients in need of healing. Potions were hoarded for battle itself or for those in immediate need, and he bound and splinted and bandaged what he had no more energy to fix. As he stumbled over to the next bed, a strong grip on his shoulder propelled him back and into a chair. Hawke pushed a glass of water into his hands, his expression a curious twist of soft resignation.

“I'll take over from here.”

Anders wanted to protest that healing magic wasn't something that Hawke seemed to be particularly good at, but he nodded wearily instead and slumped back in the chair, draining the glass of water and placing it on the ground, closing his eyes.

He was dozing by the time a gloved hand pressed against the back of his neck, and he mumbled a protest as he was pulled to his feet, his arm dragged over someone's – Hawke's – wolf's fur shoulders. Wherever they were going, the walk seemed to take an eternity until he was finally lowered onto a bed, and he slept, dreamless.

Hawke was still asleep by the time sunlight slanted over Anders' eyes from the window, waking him. Hawke had stripped them both to their breeches, and was curled in a too-warm bulk against him, one arm lying so very casually over his belly, bearded chin tucked against Anders' shoulder. Hawke had a gentle, if insistent snore, and occasionally his fingers would twitch, and the mop of dark hair seemed untameable in the morning. Everything seemed so normal, so inevitable, that it frightened him.

Trying to pry Hawke's arm off him only woke up the other mage, however. Hawke muttered something against his neck and yawned, tightening his grip when Anders tried to squirm free. “Good morning.”

“I should check back on my patients.” Anders tapped meaningfully at Hawke's arm.

“Five more minutes?”

“No.”

“Tyrant.” Hawke accused, though he sat up, rubbing his eyes, and for some reason he couldn't immediately fathom, instead of taking the chance to escape, Anders lay where he was, tracking the lean, sleek curve of Hawke's back with his eyes as Hawke stretched luxuriously.

“What are you doing next?” Anders asked quietly.

Hawke set his shoulders against the wall, his elegant hands in his lap, and glanced back down at him. “What do you want me to do next?”

“I hate it when people talk like that,” Anders groused.

“I hate it when people try and hide the fact that they're trying to commit suicide.”

“That's not what I was...” Anders swallowed his words at Hawke's arched eyebrow. “Never mind. I'm not going to argue with you.”

“That's a change, at least.” Hawke muttered, looking briefly up and out of the window for a moment. “You'll always have 'Priorities'. I understand that. I just wish that you would trust me a little.”

“I haven't known you for very long, technically,” Anders pointed out acerbically.

Hawke's lips twisted briefly. “True. But even before... I suppose I see now that it wasn't something born entirely from the spirit that was tenanting your head. Any means to an end?”

“It's not like that. And it wasn't any of your business. Besides, everything went spectacularly awry, didn't it?”

Hawke narrowed his eyes, and for a moment, Anders expected a snap, a snarl, but eventually, Hawke only exhaled loudly. “What are you doing next?”

“I expect that the Warden-Commander will have orders after I'm finished with the infirmary.”

“You're very loyal to him,” Hawke said, and there was a touch of jealousy there, a hint of resentment, despite everything.

“I was a fugitive, about to be killed or worse by the templars when he found me. He destroyed my phylactery and inducted me into the Wardens, giving me a lifetime of bad dreams and days spent dancing with the darkspawn. But the Wardens have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Cat-haters aside. I have a purpose here. And as wrangling, judgmental, eccentric, vicious and downright odd as the others are, it gave me a... family as well, for a time, until I got myself possessed. I've never had that before. I feel that I owe him.”

“You do seem happier,” Hawke noted, reluctantly. “Than when you were in Kirkwall.”

“I was also glowing blue at the time and having time lapses, apparently, if Varric is to be believed. Not very conducive to happiness.”

“But you'll never betray your Commander. Never lie to him.”

“He has a complex and highly sensitive internal lie detector. And, as you've seen, he packs a very heavy punch,” Anders quipped, then he sobered under Hawke's unchanging stare. “It took quite a while. And a lot of darkspawn. Apparently it builds character.”

“I suppose it may be safer for you here,” Hawke conceded grudgingly. “I can't stay. I've sent word to Isabela to meet the rest of us at the port at Qarinus. I started all of this. I'll need to find a way to solve it.”

“'Solve' an Old God?”

Hawke shot him a quick, tired smile. “Exactly. There must be a way. Something that we can do.”

“I wish that I had your optimism.” Anders sat up, dangling his legs over the edge of the bed, biting down briefly on his lower lip. “Will we... will we meet again?”

“Aren't you coming with me?”

Anders turned sharply to stare at Hawke. “Didn't you hear what I said? It's up to the Warden-Commander. And besides, you said that it would be safer for me here.”

“It will be.”

“And weren't you angry with me?”

“So?” Hawke arched an eyebrow. “We used to fight. All couples do. Small things and larger things, disagreements to quarrels, sometimes a few times a day. It doesn't mean that I want to leave you.”

“I don't know, Hawke,” Anders said, reluctantly, even as he could feel a choking weight in his chest at Hawke's words. “I need some time.”

Hawke's shoulders slumped, as if he had expected this, but he nodded slowly. “Take all the time that you want. And when you have an answer for me, on what you want from me, contact Feynriel. He will know how to find me.”

Lusacan began with the Imperium. Minrathous was was torched, and depending on which story one believed, the Archon and the Black Divine were devoured or torn to pieces. Coiled in the centre of the Circle of Magi, Lusacan began to build itself a new Imperium. An army and a new religion seemed to spring up overnight, and the remnants of the Imperium, led by the inner circle of the Archon, began to wage a bitter civil war against the Black Dragon, while the world watched, its own bloody battles with the Circles and the Orders temporarily slowed.

Qarinus was still magister-held, and the city was full of refugees trying to beg or pay passage from the few ships docked at the harbor. As a small boat pulled away from the docks, seemingly headed towards one of the larger ships anchored in the distance, men and women ran for it, pushing and pulling at each other, screaming and brandishing pouches of coin, only to be beaten back by the sailors.

Coming aboard the Siren's Blade seemed laden with uneven memories. Anders ran his fingers over the edge, nodding at its lady Captain at the helm as she saluted him jauntily, then at Varric, slouched over coils of rope and writing on his journal at the mainmast.

Hawke was watching the chaos at the shore, expressionless, even as he turned to regard Anders as he approached the prow. “Have you been waiting long?”

“A few days.” Anders passed Hawke a wrapped stack of letters and reports. “A present from the Warden-Commander.”

“'Light reading' as always, I should think.” Hawke said wryly, making no move to open the stack. “I wasn't expecting you. Usually Sigrun or Stroud runs dispatch.”

“They're otherwise occupied?” Anders suggested, unable to parse Hawke's guarded features. “Why, are you disappointed?”

“I'm disappointed,” Varric said, though he grinned as he said this. “I was looking forward to seeing Sigrun.”

It had been months, months spent alternatively thinking that he had made possibly the worst conscious mistake of his life, or thinking that he was lucky to get out of something that seemed so irrevocable while he still could keep his freedom. In the end, tired of his 'moping', the Warden-Commander had ordered him to run dispatch. Anders supposed that after it all, he wasn't surprised who their 'Raider' contact was, or at the Commander's motives.

Inclining his head, Anders decided to make his leave, his heart heavy within him. At least this clarified things, however much of a shock it had been to recognise the sails of the Siren's Blade from the shore. Of course Hawke wouldn't wait for so long-

A hand clamped tight on his shoulder and spun him around, up against the rail of the ship, and Hawke was kissing him the way he loved it, fingers curled around the back of his neck, deep and sure and slow. He moaned, trying to give back as much as he got, sucking on Hawke's tongue, clenching his hands in the thick wolf's fur, gasping when they broke for air, then making an inarticulate noise of want at the back of his throat when Hawke promptly crushed their mouths together again.

“Weigh anchor!” Hawke called back at Isabela, when he pulled back again, an arm curled tight around Anders' waist, pressing them flush together, close enough for Anders to hear the hammering beat of Hawke's heart even over the waves, smell fire and lightning.

“Who made you Cap'n?” Isabela shot back, though she turned to bark orders at her crew.

“I didn't say I was... the Warden-Commander just told me to...” Anders shivered as Hawke merely kissed him again, then again until he was breathing shallowly, fighting for breath. “You're impossible. This is a kidnapping,” he added, though he couldn't help but smile helplessly as he said it.

“I should never have left you in the outpost. Did you even think about things? Or did you just hope that everything would go away?”

“You said that I could have all the time I wanted!”

“Not half a year,” Hawke retorted, illogically, and just as Anders was about to point this out, he was silenced with another, hard kiss. “I had to wait three years for you once. I don't want to do that again. I love you.”

The words weren't exactly meant for him, but he couldn't help but flush, the warm coil of sensation within him twisting tight and choking. “You don't really-”

“I meant it. I've been thinking as well-”

“He's been a blasted pest about it,” Isabela shouted from the helm, her fingers tracing lovingly over the spokes, and she deepened her voice to mimic Hawke's. “'Maker, I never should have left him in the outpost!' and 'Do you think he's taken anyone else into his bed?' or, my personal favourite-”

“Thank you for the input, Isabela,” Hawke snapped, even as Varric chuckled from the mainmast.

“Well then, stop making a show of it all on my deck!”

“Captain's orders,” Hawke shrugged, though he didn't let go, and slowly, wryly, Anders let down the rest of his guard, and listened to the voice deepest within his soul. He might not yet know love for what it was or should be, but if he ever could, it would be with this man.

Hawke blinked as Anders wreathed fingers through his unruly hair and pulled him close, their lips brushing together in a tender caress that he pressed up in butterfly kisses to Hawke's ear. “I'm done thinking about what I want from you,” he whispered. “Together, let's chase that next horizon.”