Title: Same Story, Retold
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Dragon Age
Disclaimer: Bioware's. !Mine.
Summary: From a kink meme prompt: Anders is still with the Wardens with no Justice. In the Deep Roads, it is Hawke that contracts the Taint. Varric, Aveline, and sibling manage to find Nathanial and Anders by chance. Hawke survived the Joining and now is a Grey Warden.
Word Count: 6,685
They stumbled across the travellers by accident, treasure seekers from Kirkwall foolish enough to brave the Deep Roads in the hope that the Darkspawn were too few in number to pose a danger. In a way, they had not erred; the Darkspawn had fallen beneath their blades, but it was too late for one of their number, the woman who was cradled in the lap of a man, her skin turned a disturbing ash-grey as the taint spread through her system. A dwarf kneeling by her side, patting her hand helplessly, looked devastated.
"I'm sorry," the man said as his voice shook and his eyes brightened suspiciously. "I never meant any of what I said. I don't hate you. Please don't die. What will I tell mother?" A brother then. The family resemblance was obvious after a moment's examination.
Another woman, in the armour of the Kirkwall guard, had her jaw clenched against any tears, shook her head sharply, "Just like Wesley," she said, darkly, and it was she, on guard against any other darkspawn, who noticed the Grey Wardens approach first, and drew her sword. When she saw they were in fact not monsters, the point of her sword lowered.
"Grey Wardens...?" she said, and her eyes widened as it took in the distinctive griffon emblem they all wore.
Except for Anders. He'd informed the Warden-Commander that they could make him leave him leave his cat at the fortress, they could assign some Templar to him in an extremely poorly concealed attempt to placate the Chantry, and they could force him into the dark closed in Deep Roads, but there was no way in Thedas he was wearing the newly redesigned armour that some nug herder at Weishauppt thought looked good. He didn't suit that shade of blue.
In the end they'd reached a compromise: Anders would get to wear whatever he liked, and in return he would stop trying to give his Templar watcher Roland the slip. Anders had kept his fingers crossed behind his back when he made the deal. He still hadn't forgiven the Commander for making him give up his cat.
Or for caving to the Chantry.
"Hail, Guardswoman of Kirkwall," Nathaniel Howe, leader of this particular excursion into the Deep Roads, was the one who took the lead. "I might ask what travellers such as yourselves are doing so very far into the Deep Roads that we find you here. I trust you are not simply lost."
The woman on the ground moaned, her voice cracking, clearly pained. Anders pushed past the other Wardens, ignoring Howe's huff of disapproval and Roland's scowl, and knelt down beside her. It was obvious even without the visual signs. He could feel the taint within her, burning away at her core.
"Not lost, no. We were... trapped... away from our expedition. Our friend became ill." The Guardswoman hesitated, "I have seen these symptoms before. My husband, who died from the darkspawn blight when it infected his blood."
"She's right," Anders volunteered, and touched at hand to the woman's forehead. Her skin was burning. "It's progressed very far."
"Oh Hawke," the dwarf murmured, "I'm so sorry. I should never have brought you down here."
"It was an adventure," the woman, Hawke, spoke in a thin, reedy voice. "Adventures are fun."
She wasn't irrevocably gone if she could still hear and speak through the pain. That, or she was very strong willed. Anders was willing to bet that it was the latter. By her side was a staff, bladed at one end, and she wore the sort of loose, comfortable and lightweight robes mages wore. Nothing like the heavy armour anyone sensible would wear for an excursion into the Deep Roads. She didn't have the look of a Circle Mage, her fingers calloused and her face showing the signs of someone used to being outside. An apostate then.
Anders liked her already.
The Guardswoman was speaking. "There was a... woman... who once told me that the only cure for the blight was the Grey Wardens. Can you help her?"
"She's a mage!" Roland blurted out, his irritation a near physical thing.
"Congratulations, Roland. Full marks in observation and analysis. You're wasted in the Wardens." Anders glowered across the intervening space at the Templar, who glared back.
"She is a good woman who does not deserve to die for the accident of her birth," the Guardswoman looked like she was about to draw her sword on Roland for his lack of respect for her friend. "If you can help her, please, do so. If you have any compassion within you, you will not let an innocent die for your prejudice."
"The only cure is to become a Grey Warden. And it may already be too late." Howe looked skeptically at the woman and then at Anders.
Anders shrugged. He had no idea how long she had left to live. There was every chance that she was too far gone to save. "Is there anything to be lost by trying?"
"A Grey Warden?" her brother raised his head from staring intently at Hawke's face, as if he were trying to memorise every feature. "How?"
"That is not for you to know," Howe said, sharply, "We can take her, and attempt to save her. But it may not work, and I'm afraid you will not be able to see her again."
"But she'll live," her brother said, and stared at Howe with startling intensity.
Howe's mouth thinned. "Maybe."
Anders said, gently, "It's a better chance than she has right now."
"It's your choice, Carver," the dwarf said, and squeezed Hawke's increasingly limp hand.
Carver seemed torn for a long moment, then he nodded, overemphasising the movement as if that would help convince him that he'd made the right decision. "Take her. Help her. Please."
Howe nodded to two of the junior Wardens who had accompanied them on expedition to come forward and help Hawke to her feet, each of them taking a side and throwing her arms over their shoulders.
"Ser!" That was Roland, the little prick, voicing his predictable objections. "Having one apostate in the Wardens is bad enough. To take a second, the Chantry-"
"The Chantry isn't here, Roland. I am, and I'm in Command. So be silent, or be gone." Howe gestured sharply, ending the discussion. Roland looked very annoyed, and Anders' heart cheered at the sight.
Then Hawke coughed, and concern welled to the fore. "We should move quickly," he said, "The taint is well progressed, and we need to reach the surface soon if we're to have any hope of saving her."
"Be well, Hawke," the guardswoman said, putting her hand on Hawke's shoulder before withdrawing, her jaw tighter than ever.
The other Wardens started to drag their newest recruit down the hallway, but before Anders could follow, Carver halted him, and pressed Hawke's staff into his hand. "It's our father's," he said, clearly uncomfortable, "All she has of him. Please, if she survives... give it back to her."
It was old, very old. The wood of the shaft of the stave was worn smooth by the touch of countless hands, and the ribbon wrapped about it had the feeling of enchanted cloth, designed never to fray or tear. The blade on the end had the same feel. A very old weapon then, nothing like the staff Anders himself carried. He nodded and tucked it into the sheath at his back for safekeeping. "I will," he promised. If she did not, he would find some way of returning it to her family. A message, from one apostate to another's family, one that Roland couldn't see: sorry for your loss.
Maker, Anders hated that man.
~*~
They moved as quickly as they could, dragging the dead weight that was a barely-living woman. They paused only to give her sips of water when she begged them, though that was sparingly. One of the symptoms of the taint was a terrible thirst that could not be slaked, and if they let her, she would drink all their water rations.
At camp, they acted quickly. They had a small amount of the necessities for a Joining with them at all times, just in case, and Howe went to retrieve it as Anders settled the woman on his bedroll, which he made more comfortable by stealing Roland's to double pad her body. He was dabbing at her forehead with a cool cloth, soaked with water from a nearby stream that someone else had retrieved, when Howe returned with the cup. It wasn't exactly a formal joining, but Howe murmured the ritual words, even if she could not hear them, as Anders helped her clasp her hands around the cup and drink.
She jerked backwards as the blood hit her stomach, every muscle going rigid, and all Anders could do was lower her to the ground and wait to see if she would die in the next few minutes. It seemed like a single moment stretched into eternity as they waited for the muscles to slacken. Finally, she sagged back onto the bedroll, her hair and clothes soaked with sweat, and Anders leaned forward to check on her. He could feel the taint within her, but no longer that raging, out of control forest fire that could consume the innocent. Instead it was more of the same dormant malevolence that was inside him. She still breathed, and her heartbeat was strong and steady.
"She lives," he said, tersely, and swivelled his head to give Roland a bright, toothy grin. "Disappointed?"
Roland grunted and walked away, probably to compose a letter to the Chantry about the den of apostates that the Wardens were becoming. Anders decided to spend at least one evening in the next few nights putting him on edge by constantly practicing the few damaging spells he knew. Roland always looked twitchy whenever he did that, one stray icicle away from dropping the pretense that he wasn't there as Anders' keeper.
He wondered if the new recruit, Hawke, would be willing to help him with that. He wondered if she had worked as firepower for her little Deep Roads expedition, or a healer. He would guess that she was there to tear the Darkspawn apart with magic. Apostates didn't have much of a chance to learn the more delicate side of magic that healing was. It took a lot of training, which most didn't have.
"We need to get back into the Deep Roads as soon as possible," Howe said to Anders, as he started to remove her sweat-sodden robes. Under other circumstances, Anders might make comments about having the opportunity to undress a pretty girl, but she was his patient and in spite of what the Warden-Commander intimated, he was perfectly capable of acting professionally. Besides, she was a sister Warden now, and this was just one of the services they had to provide for each other.
He covered her with a light blanket that Mari, one of the juniors, had left folded nearby. "Do me a favour and take the Templar with you," Anders said, "Don't want to make her run for the hills the moment she wakes up."
Howe frowned, but didn't argue. "Think you can handle the explanations?" he said.
"'Welcome to the Grey Wardens, your death is only postponed for a few decades'?"
Howe sighed and rubbed his forehead. "For her sake, Anders, I hope you'll put it more diplomatically than that."
"Don't worry," Anders said, as he laid the cool cloth in his hands on their newest recruit's brow, "In the Circle, my bedside manner was legendary."
~*~
Anders heard the shouting long before he saw the two who were arguing. He didn't need to look to know the owner of the strident tones. Three years had passed since her recruitment into the Grey Wardens, and Marian Hawke had made an indelible mark on his consciousness that no amount of attempts to distract himself with other men and women managed to erase. He'd given in quickly, less than a year after he'd met her, and hadn't regretted a moment.
All things considered, Hawke had taken her recruitment rather well, certainly better than those who ran as soon as the Wardens turned their backs. She had taken it with the air of one used to dealing with whatever life throws at them, whatever that might be, though Anders pretended he didn't know that she'd quietly sent a letter to her family to let them know she was alive and well. They'd naturally gravitated together, the only mages within the Wardens, and both of them resentful of the clear caving to the Chantry that Roland presented, and, after him, a woman named Celia, clearly intended to be Hawke's watcher.
Hawke, who had been an apostate all her life, and who had confided to Anders that she would rather die than be subject to Chantry control, had not taken this well. Her now-frequent and explosive arguments with the Warden Commander of the Free Marches were the stuff of legends.
The subject of this particular row appeared to be that Hawke had left the Wardens fortress base and had realised that Celia was following her from a distance, keeping her eye on her. Considering that the Commander had repeatedly told both she and Anders that the Templars were not there to watch them, that was something that shouldn't have happened. Both Anders and Hawke knew perfectly well that the Warden Commander lied to them, something which sat particularly ill with Hawke. Anders was inclined to let it slide, not to argue the point. Hawke confronted it with the sort of raw depth of feeling that made Anders look at her and feel afraid of the fervour she stirred inside him in response.
The Warden Commander was Elvhen, which was irrelevant save for the fact that it made him treat all of the Human wardens with a sort of snotty officiousness that rubbed Anders precisely the wrong way. He also seemed to be on the side of the Chantry when it came to the opinion on the matter of mage control. Supposedly, Grey Wardens shouldn't care what you were, only if you could fight the Darkspawn. Unfortunately, Anders knew all too well that prejudices against mages could be very deeply ingrained.
"If Celia was following you," the Commander was saying as Anders turned the corner of the corridor to see them, "Then she was doing it on her own initiative. She hasn't been ordered to keep an eye on you."
"Not by you, perhaps." Hawke's fists were clenched at her sides, and Anders could see a crackle of lightning around her fingers, quickly suppressed. "I wasn't aware the Wardens answered to the Chantry now."
"The Wardens have no dealing in politics. We're neutral. You know that."
Anders snorted pointedly, coming up behind Hawke to stand at her shoulder. "Yes, tell that to the Arl of Amaranthine."
The Commander scowled at Anders' interruption. The Warden-Commander of Ferelden was a sore point in the higher echelons of the Order. The fact that he had not died fighting the Archdemon of the last Blight, and that he had managed to accrue a great deal of political power made the Wardens very wary. Anders had wondered, once or twice, if their summoning of Anders to the Free Marches, where they then proceeded to watch him carefully, was a deliberate slight to the Warden who had snatched him out of the grips of the Templars.
Templars. Wardens. They were both prison guards of different sorts. The woman who stood next to him, clad in a lighter armour of the Wardens more suitable for spellcasting, her warmth a near physical thing, was one of the few things that made the Wardens bearable.
"Keep Celia away from me," Hawke snapped, "I won't be held responsible if there's a mysterious rock slide that happens behind me next time I'm out gathering herbs."
The Commander folded his arms. "You'll work with her and you'll do your job. You're a Warden. Act like it."
Hawke scoffed, turned on her heel and walked away. Anders took a moment to give the Warden Commander a bright, cheery smile, before he followed her. Unsurprisingly, she headed to the room he had been assigned in the drafty fortress, the room which they had more or less shared constantly for the last two years. Technically she had her own quarters, but she was so rarely there that he wondered if the domestic staff even bothered dusting it any more. She sat on his bed, and scowled at the middle distance.
He lit the fire with a gesture, driving back the cold from the harsh winds that blew off the plains to envelop the mountain-side fortress, and turned back to see her engaged in giving the cat that sat on the bed a thorough chin-scratching. It wasn't Ser Pounce-A-Lot, that brave soldier had been forced to give up his Darkspawn smiting and become one of the fortress's mousers. Anders had been quite angry at the Warden Commander for making him do so, though Ser Pounce had still come and sat on Anders' bed when he was at the keep. But eventually Ser Pounce died while Anders was away in the Deep Roads. This cat was one of Ser Pounce's offspring, of which there were many (a fact which Anders was very proud of), who had one day taken up residence in his room and refused to be moved.
The cat, Tumbledown as named by Hawke because of its too-large paws which it kept tripping over, was purring loudly, the low thrumming noise serving to visibly take the edge off Hawke's frazzled nerves. "I miss my mabari," she murmured, as Tumbledown's eyes shut in pleasure.
"Cats are better," Anders said. He sat down next to her, cat between them, and Tumbledown rolled onto his back, paws in the air, and fixed Anders with a pitiful look. Anders rubbed the cat's furry belly, and the purring increased.
"Says you. A mabari would be able to tear out Celia's throat. And Roland's too, for good measure." Hawke squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I hate it. I hate that they're always watching. Waiting for me to make a move out of line that they can use as an excuse to strike me down."
He sighed and shook his head. "You should see what it's like in a Circle. There's a reason I ran away, you know."
"How can you stand that?" Hawke paused in her petting, to Tumbledown's displeasure. "Three years of this and I'm reading to crack and go on a rampage, and that's with just one Templar watching. We spent our lives in Ferelden on the move constantly, trying to keep me, my father, my sister, trying to keep us all out of the Chantry's reach. I knew why but..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "How much worse is the Circle?"
He frowned, not liking the unhappiness he saw on her face. "Someone once asked me the same thing," he said, "Asked me why the injustice of mage oppression didn't bother me so much."
She rubbed her eyes tiredly and opened them again to look at him. "And what did you tell him?"
"That it wasn't my business." Anders' mouth twisted. "He didn't like that answer. He was a big fan of moral absolutes. I wonder what happened to him." He'd last seen the Fade spirit just before he'd been ordered to the Free Marches. He had no idea if he was still haunting the rotting flesh that had once been a Grey Warden.
Hawke was silent for a moment, then, so suddenly it startled him, she leaned forward, grabbing his hands tightly in hers. Tumbledown leapt off the bed, spooked. "Let's get out of here," she said, her voice just above a whisper, as if Roland or Celia might be outside the door, listening in. Which wasn't too unlikely, actually. "Let's run away. You ran from the Circle. Neither of us asked to be Grey Wardens. Let's leave."
He stared at her, and the thought made him dizzy. He opened his mouth to voice a protest of some sort, but it died unspoken. He hated being a Warden. He hated having to go into the Deep Roads, hated the fact that he was more of a prisoner than at the Circle, where they had the good grace to at least not pretend that he was free. He owed nothing to the Wardens. The Hero of Ferelden's conscription might have saved him from the tower, but the Hero had made no move to keep him in Amaranthine. His use for Anders had come to an end, and he saw no reason for fight for him.
He owed the Wardens nothing.
He loosened his hands from hers, but before any hint of disappointment could cross her mind, he reached up to cup her face and brought their lips together in a firm, passionate kiss. Then he embraced her, and she pressed her face into his neck. "I thought you'd never ask," he murmured, and felt her smile against his skin. "I think Roland has my phylactery. Did Celia-?"
Hawke shook her head, and drew apart enough to speak to him. "Taking a phylactery would break the facade that the Templars aren't here to watch us. The fact that I threatened to burn alive anyone who tried to take one might also have been convincing."
He grinned at her, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I knew there was a reason I loved you," he said, and she smiled like she had the first time he'd said that. "But we still need to find mine."
"I've been thinking about that," Hawke said, "I don't think it's in storage anywhere. If it was, it'd be too much of a risk that you might go looking for it and find it. So either Roland has it, or the Commander has it."
The Templars wouldn't have been recruited without the Commander's consent, after all. Neither were conscripts, nor Joined in the field. "So we either break into the Commander's office, or Roland's quarters."
"Or both at the same time, the advantage of being two people." Hawke said. "And I think we should go to Kirkwall."
He blinked at her in surprise. "You want to go to the heart of the Templar Order in this part of Thedas?"
"Yes," Hawke had her jaw set in a way he recognised. "For one, it's the last place anyone will think we'll head. Also, I have friends in the city, contacts that can be used to keep out of sight. Anywhere else, we'd be starting with nothing at all. And..." She faltered for a moment. "And if we get caught and killed, at least I'll be free when they get me."
"You've thought about this a lot."
"It wasn't so bad at first," she said, with a sigh. "Then Celia turned up, and it all started feeling like the air was choking me. Like I wasn't allowed to live. Promise me." She clutched his hand so tightly he winced. "Promise me we'll help any mages we find, that we'll not just escape and selfishly hide forever. It's not right. There were rumours in Kirkwall, dark rumours, that the Knight Commander changed the rules to oppress her mages more than anywhere else. They don't deserve that. What if it was you, or me?"
Anders had the old urge to dismiss it as none of his concern, but the intensity with which she stared at him made him squirm inside. "You're going to be the death of me," he told her.
She grinned, knowing that she'd already won him over. "Oh no," she said, and pulled closer to him, straddling his lap and twining her arms around his neck. "You don't get to die until I've had my very wicked way with you."
~*~
In the end, they decided they needed to work out who had Anders' phylactery before they made a move to retrieve it. It was too dangerous to try to steal from both Roland and the Commander at the same time, so Anders contrived, on a day where he was supposed to be only gone from the fortress for a few hours to grab some herbs that they were low in stock on, to spend the better part of two days away. For any other Warden, this wouldn't cause immediate alarm as he wasn't scheduled to be sent on assignment for another two weeks, but as Hawke told him on his return, it had taken a day before Roland had appeared in the Commander's office, looking agitated. Hawke herself had contrived some reason to be there, a fictional issue with Celia that wouldn't be suspicious.
"He's been gone over a day," Roland had apparently raged, "I've warned the Wardens on the dangers of apostates before." He'd shot a glower at Hawke as he said this.
"He said he was going to look for signs of spindleweed over on the north ridge," Hawke said, placidly, reciting the story they'd planned out. "It's quick a walk there and back. He'll be back tomorrow at the latest, he said. He cleared it with Emno." Emno, the most absent minded of the Warden-Commander's immediate subordinates, who would leave his sword at home if it wasn't attached to his belt. The Commander had clearly realised that he would never be able to confirm that story, if his grimace was anything to go by.
"A likely story," Roland sneered.
"I'm sure," Hawke said, with a sneer of her own, as a look of innocence wouldn't have worked on her, "That a tracker of your calibre, Roland, will be able to manage to find him if he's really vanished."
And there, the Commander's eyes had flickered towards the wall, a specific shield with the emblem of the Wardens on it. It was only a second, but it was enough. When Anders returned, she told him that there was almost certainly a hidden safe behind that shield. After that, it was only a matter of waiting, of biding their time. The opportunity came up less than a month later, when the Commander left with a small contingent, including Celia (in an attempt to pacify Hawke into believing that she wasn't exclusively assigned to her), and in the dead of night, they packed up the few things they needed to take with them, which had somehow included Tumbledown - the cat had simply climbed inside Anders' pack when they'd been stuffing it full, and had refused to be moved (Hawke had proclaimed this a sign the cat was too smart for its own good) and crept through the hallways. They left behind a carefully misleading trail. They'd cleaned the rooms almost completely, except for a few subtle, easy to miss hints (that the Templars would not miss) that would lead anyone looking for them to believe that they were heading for Starkhaven instead of the other direction entirely. Hopefully by the time they realised their error, Anders and Hawke would be long gone.
They wore tough, serviceable clothing, he in a feathered getup that Hawke claimed was just asking for the cat to try to eat his shoulders, and she in a getup that wouldn't have looked out of place as a common worker, all pockets and belt loops. They didn't make the sound of clinking metal that the Warden armour did, and they crept through the corridors. The Warden Commander's office was locked, but Anders had stolen the master key off the keep's Seneschal when he was well into his cups, and made a copy a long time ago. He locked the door behind them to give them warning if anyone caught up to them, and helped Hawke remove the shield from the wall.
Behind it was a loose brick, so well masked that they might have missed it if they hadn't known that something was there, and behind that, a locked metal box. While Hawke set about trying to open it, Anders crossed to the window and looked outside, sticking his arm through the arrow-loop that looked out onto the plains.
Hawke struggled to open the box, failing to open it with pure physical force, and after a moment's worry that magic would wake Roland up, she set it in the fireplace, and blasted it with ice until the metal of the padlock shattered with a single blow, revealing the contents.
Most of it was disappointingly mundane. Confidential letters from the First Warden, which they both ignored as being unimportant as far as they were concerned, small personal items, including what was clearly a woman's hair ribbon, and there, buried at the bottom, inside a small wooden case marked with the emblem of the Ferelden Circle of Magi, was a phylactery. Hawke removed it, and it glowed brightly in Anders' presence.
"I imagined it would be larger," Anders murmured. It was a tiny vial, barely the length of Hawke's palm. He held out a hand, and she passed it over. He had barely wrapped his fingers around it when there was a loud thud that shook the door in its frame. They both jumped and stared, knowing what it was, then the door was struck again, and this time the lock broke, throwing the door open to reveal Roland, dressed in full armour and with his sword in his hands.
"I knew you were up to something," he said, sounding slightly out of breath. He must have been keeping an eye on Anders to know that he'd snuck out. Maybe he'd gone to see if Anders was asleep in his room, and then, realising he was gone, ran to to Commander's office.
"Very astute," Anders said dryly. "However, I have found what I'm looking for, so we'll be going now."
"You're not going anywhere," Roland said, "The Warden Commander will be very interested to know what you two have been up to. Now give me the phylactery."
"This thing?" Anders dropped it on the floor. The delicate glass of the vial smashed on the stone floor, and Anders followed it up with a fireball. The glass melted to the stone, and blood was scorched, useless and gone. "Oops?"
Roland smirked. "We'll just make another one. You broke into the Commander's office. The Wardens will know the wisdom of keeping track of you. You too, Hawke."
"Oh, shut up, Roland." Hawke snapped, and turned to face the wall. Anders, who knew what she was doing, braced himself, but Roland had no way of knowing what she planned. Hawke had spent a long time learning Force Magic, liking the absolute control over raw magical force that it gave her. She'd confessed to Anders that it made her feel like she was in control, and that getting to knock people off their feet was just a bonus.
It could also be used to knock non-Human objects around, provided you had enough raw strength. And she did. Hawke gathered her strength, before Roland could think to negate her magic, and slammed the wall of the office with enough raw forced that it knocked a hole clean through the wall, with a loud enough bang and displacement of air that it probably woke the whole keep. Anders kept his footing, Roland did not.
Then they were moving, running and jumping, flying through the air down the side of the keep to land in the massive snow drift that Anders had conjured, laying ice in thin, soft sheets while Hawke had been trying to open the Commander's strongbox. It wasn't the most comfortable of landings, but it was a lot better than dashing their brains out on the solid ground. Anders, who had been cradling his pack in his arms as they jumped, peered into the top. Tumbledown hissed his displeasure, and did his best to scratch Anders' nose off. Satisfied the cat was fine, he levered himself to his feet, and as he helped Hawke do the same, looked up. Roland was staring down at them in clear shock, obviously not willing to do the same suicidal stunt and leap after them.
Hawke tugged on his hand, and he looked back down at her. "Let's run," she gasped, breath short and her eyes bright. He squeezed her fingers, and they ran all the way to Kirkwall.
~*~
"This is familiar," Hawke murmured, as they stood at the Gallows gate, the main entrance to the city. They needed to get inside without attracting attention, or their names being taken down by some well-meaning guard. They had lingered on the fringes of normal traffic in and out of the city, when Hawke's eyes had lit up, and she'd scrabbled for paper and ink, and scrawled a brief note. Now Anders stood, Tumbledown in his arms as he submitted to having his head scratched, watching her cross to a dark-haired guard and hand over the note. The guard nodded and disappeared.
Anders looked questioningly at her as she returned to his side.
"Donnic's a good man," she said, "He promised to deliver a message to Aveline. She's the guard captain these days."
It took a while. Getting messages across the water to the city proper took time, but before the day was out, a woman with red hair was approaching Hawke, her eyes wide and disbelieving. "Hawke!" she said, and Anders recognised her from the depths of memory. This woman had been with Hawke when the Wardens had stumbled across her party in the Deep Roads.
"Aveline!" Hawke threw her arms around the guardswoman, and after a moment, Aveline returned the embrace with an awkward pat.
"I thought you were with the Wardens for life," Aveline said, and in spite of the gruffness of her tone, there looked to be genuine fondness there. "I thought we'd never see you again."
"Well..." Hawke looked at him, and he shrugged. Aveline was her friend. She knew what to say. "We're not exactly on sanctioned leave from the Grey Wardens."
"Maker, only you, Hawke." Aveline shook her head and closed her eyes briefly. "You need to get into the city to hide, right?"
"Right."
Aveline pursed her lips. "Your brother and mother did well with the money the expedition made," she said. "They moved up into Hightown, took over the Amell estate. You could go to them."
Hawke was shaking her head before Aveline had finished speaking. "I can't stay with them. Let them know I'm here and alive yes, but if the Wardens come here looking, I don't want to put Carver or Mother in danger."
Aveline thought about it a moment longer. "I have an idea. Come on. I'll get you into the city."
~*~
Aveline took them to Darktown, where most people were smart enough to give the guard captain a wide berth. It seemed that Aveline had gained a reputation for scrupulous fairness. The bandits and gangs might not have liked her, but the average Darktown denizen had come to realise that if they truly needed help from the guard, they would not be turned away.
"You're an apostate as well," she'd asked Anders, as they descended into the city and the air became thicker and harder to breathe.
"Is that a problem?" he'd asked.
Aveline just scoffed and didn't answer. She led them through the twisting passages of Darktown, until she came to barred doors, behind which was a middle sized cleared out space, presumably a former warehouse. "We cleared smugglers out of here last week," she said. "Look familiar?"
"Yes," Hawke said, looking around, "Isn't... that hidden entrance to the cellars beneath the Amell estate around here?"
"Right next door," Aveline said, pointing. "I don't think anyone's going to be objecting to the space being taken over. And if the presence of a couple of apostates who keep their head down stops it being used by smugglers and slavers, then all to the better." Aveline hesitated. "It's... not what you planned, with the expedition, I know. You were aiming for Hightown-"
"It's fine," Hawke said, and gave her friend another hug. "Don't worry about me. Anders and I can handle ourselves."
Tumbledown mewed, as if to voice his opinion on the matter. "Anders, the cat and I," Hawke corrected, and gave him a soft smile that never failed to cause his stomach to flip over.
"A couple of apostates, and a cat, in a city full of Templars. Maker, you're either incredibly brave or the stupidest woman who ever lived." Aveline shook her head. "I have to get back up to the Keep before I'm missed. I'll let your family know you're here, and that you'll come and see them soon."
That left them alone in the empty space. Anders set Tumbledown on the floor, and watched for a moment as the cat ran back and forth madly, mapping out the space, tripping up and sending himself sprawling more than once before getting back up again and running about some more.
"So," he said, "What do we do now?"
Hawke ran her fingers through her hair. "Live for a bit without the Templars staring at us? Take a deep breath?" She wrinkled her nose. "Well, maybe not on the nights where the chokedamp's bad."
Anders looked towards the door. As they'd passed through Darktown, people had looked at them with desperation in their eyes. He'd seen people who were clearly sick, or badly injured, and it stirred instincts in him that had been submerged by a life on the run from Templars, and then by the needs of the Wardens. He'd trained to be a Healer once, and there was part of him that couldn't stand the sight of people's suffering. Maybe that was why he'd agreed with Hawke on her foolhardy notion of helping mages, because, somewhere, deep down, he couldn't stand the thought that people were suffering.
"I have an idea or two," he told her. "As long as you're here..." Words failed him for a moment. They'd run for weeks across the Free Marches, with little more than their faith and desperation to get them through at some points. And the only thing he could think was that it was worth it, to be free, and to be with her.
She smiled, and kissed him, and seemed to know exactly what he meant.
"Hey Hawke. Were you just gonna set up shop without letting your old friend know you were here?"
"Varric!" Hawke broke off with a happy cry, and she hurried across the room to throw her arms around a Dwarf that had ambled into the disused warehouse whilst they were distracted. "How did you know-?" She babbled happily at him, but Anders lost track of the words for a moment.
Kirkwall was clearly Hawke's home. She had a place here. Maybe, just maybe, he could find a place with her.