Archive of Our Own

It starts like this…

Anders catches Fenris as he’s thrown into the cell, laying him down with gentle care and cradling his head in his lap. There’s no magic to be seen even after their silent captors depart.

“Are you alright, love?” Anders murmurs once they’re alone, carding a hand through Fenris’s brilliant white hair.

“Mm,” Fenris replies, blinking owlishly up at him. His pupils are very wide in the dark; it only lends to his beauty. “Better, now.”

“I was hoping they wouldn’t take you, too,” Anders sighs, “but I wouldn’t want to be kidnapped with anyone else.”

“Who do we have to thank for our predicament this time? Friends of yours?”

“No. Yours?”

“No.” After a moment’s thought, Fenris sighs, with gusto. “Hawke’s?”

“Hawke’s.”

F: That isn’t how it happened.
V: Oh, come on. What do you mean that’s not how it happened.
A: For one, it hardly began there.
V: Obviously it didn’t start- fine, Blondie, how does it go?

It starts like this…

Hawke brings you to a loud, crowded tavern in the middle of Lowtown that only smells a little of chokedamp, high-ceilinged and echoing the way most things in Kirkwall are.

“We're over in the corner,” he says, pointing to a long table at present only occupied by his sister and the dwarf who was with him when he first came to find you in Darktown. “Do you want anything?”

“Whatever passes for reasonable here,” you say. Hawke laughs loudly and waves you to the table.

“Hey there, Blondie,” Varric greets you. “Good to see you again. How's the clinic?”

“Fine,” you say, which is as true as it ever is, and wonder if you should be on guard here or not. “I thought you lot were headed for the Deep Roads. What are you still doing here?”

“Oh, you know. There’s always something that still needs done before you can actually start anything, isn’t there? And anyway, Hawke wants to invite more people along.”

“Is that what this is about?” you demand. “I already told you I have no intention of playing Warden again and less than no desire to go back to the Deep Roads.”

“That’s what I told Hawke,” Varric says agreeably. “But he insisted on at least giving you the option. And hey, worst case, you still get a free drink out of it. Really, though-” Varric sits forward, steepling his fingers with such an uncanny switch of tone you have to blink. “If everything goes right, it would be no small amount of coin headed your way. Less than Hawke’s share, of course, but more than enough to keep your little clinic afloat for a year.”

“Oh, is that how we’re doing this?” you say. Varric shrugs.

“I’ve also heard you’re drawing a bit of attention from the wrong types in the last week or so.” A chill goes down your spine. Justice stirs.

“Even better. Threats.”

“Hey, it’s just an observation, Blondie. The Coterie I can chase away, but the templars are a bit beyond my purview.”

“How do you even know this?”

“I’m a professional gossip.”

“Varric, I said talk to him, not scare him off,” Hawke says, appearing behind you with a round of drinks. “Anders, it’s like this: Lirene mentioned you were having some problems, and this gets you out of town for a little bit and gets you a bit of coin. It’s the most practical thing I can do at present.”

“And you get a Grey Warden for your expedition.”

“You can always say no.”

You rub at your eyes, gritty already from the smoke of the tavern. “I’m not sure you understand how dangerous the Deep Roads are.”

“I’ve fought darkspawn,” Hawke says with a note of grimness that’s at odds with his otherwise bright demeanor. “I’m not unfamiliar.”

“It’s different,” you say, “on the surface and underground.” You shake your head. “I’ll consider it, maybe. I’m not making any promises.”

The door of the Hanged Man bangs shut. The tenor of the common room doesn’t change, but something half like a chill and half like a shock runs through you like a faint, violent shiver. Hawke waves to someone behind you.

“Over here,” he calls. Justice stirs again, not rising to some perceived threat this time but rather like turning his head to better hear something in the distance. It’s almost like a song.

“Who’s that?” you ask very lowly.

It starts like this…

The Hanged Man smells, but you draw much less attention here than you do higher in the city- to an almost startling degree. Hawke is waving to you from the corner where he’s set up with the dwarf and whoever else he’s talked into his mad expedition.

You did offer assistance if ever he saw fit to call on you, even if it was before you were sure you would stay the week much less the year. You suppose that must include meeting the others you may be traveling weeks away with.

As you cross the tavern floor your markings try to come to life, power flowing along the lyrium tracings like water through a channel. You push it down, forbidding the light from showing, but as you draw nearer the table it grows more pronounced.

Hawke you know, and Bethany, and the dwarf. The last man turns in his seat and meets your eyes- though his divert almost immediately to study your markings.

He must know them for what they are straight away just as you know him for what he is in an instant.

“Mage,” you say coldly. Abomination, you almost add, but there's something that's not quite right to the sensation. Hawke’s smile grows brittle.

“I told you both of them was a bad idea, Hawke,” Varric mutters.

V: I’ve got it, I’ve got it. You don’t need to read me your diaries.
F: Should we take that to mean you’d listen?
V: Look, I’m just trying to tell a good story.

It's the kind of early that's late for the night crowd of Kirkwall when Isabela drags Fenris in, pale and unsteady but growling under his breath that he needs no help from mages.

"Look," Isabela tries, "you should at least let him check you for the poison-"

"I need nothing of the sort." Fenris tears himself away from Isabela, and falls more than sits, and bats away her hand when she tries to help him up again.

"And I suppose you're staying down there because you choose to and for no other reason?" she says.

"What's this all about?" you ask, folding the last of your clean-ish linens for the day. The lanterns aren't lit yet, but you'll have others in here soon.

"Oh, we were cleaning up a warehouse near the docks," she says blithely. "Not sure if it was proper poison gas or just a bit too much chokedamp that came through the cracks, but our favorite brooding elf here got the worst of it."

"It's nothing," Fenris insists again. His voice is thinner than normal, but you hear no obvious impediment to his breathing. "I need nothing from you."

"Right," you say. "You can stay awhile in the back room if you want; the air should be clear there." You've finally got it warded enough to keep out the chokedamp and other fumes of the undercity. "You won't do much better short of Hightown- or leaving the city altogether." Fenris grumbles further, most of them insults about mages, but Isabela prods him until he gets up and staggers for the small room.

"You're more tolerant of that than normal today," Isabela notes after the flimsy door slams shut.

"I don't exactly have time for it," you say. "I'll have half of Darktown in here in half an hour and he'll listen even less than normal like that. Do you need something else?" You don't see any blood on her, but she's almost eerily neat when she fights.

"No, no," she says, and it seems as ever like she's laughing at some joke she's not sharing. "I'll leave you to your suspect amounts of altruism."

"Thanks," you say dryly.

"Hawke invited everyone up to Lowtown tonight, by the way."

"Got it."

The Qunari mage burns like a second setting sun above the grey waters of the coast. Hawke protests, of course, but there’s no undoing it. He doesn’t understand.

“It’s a kind of obedience that is nearly instinct,” you say quietly. The crackle of flame is already dying. It smells of cooked meat and something reminiscent of a foundry. “Leashed or no.” You have never wished to submit to the Qun and neither were you born to it. You still understand that instinct.

The others are debating the whys and the wheres, inspecting the karataam’s bodies for anything of interest. You pick up the rod that compelled the mage, damaged but still functional, should it be recovered.

“What are you doing with that?” Anders asks, suspicion thick in his voice. You ignore him. The mage’s piece would have burned with him, but the rod you snap in two over your knee and the halves you throw out to sea, your markings lending you strength to clear the jagged rocks below. Anders stares at you. You don’t explain the Fog Warriors’ habits, tactical as much as to some it was moral.

“Your Chantry sister set us up,” you say to Hawke instead.

“I don’t know if-” he begins, but of everyone it’s Anders who cuts him off.

“Someone laid a trail for the Qunari that led them straight here,” he says. “She’s deliberately stirring things up.”

“She will become an even greater problem if given the opportunity,” you add. Hawke looks between the two of you uneasily.

“Surely it’s worth looking into if those two agree on it,” Varric calls from nearer the cave mouth. Hawke only shakes his head.

“I am fine.”

The mage doesn’t sigh or roll his eyes, but the magic doesn’t die around his fingers. “With this many darkspawn about, open wounds are-”

“I know the risks,” you say, keeping a tight grip on your voice. Bad enough to have come here in such company in the first place, but to be trapped is worse yet. “I will be fine.” Anders’ mouth turns down, but he lets the magic go. This close, even amid the resonance of the great veins of bright lyrium, it’s easy to feel it. You don’t let yourself visibly relax.

“As you wish,” he says neutrally, and hands you a rolled bandage instead. “If you find my touch so unbearable, you should at least use these.” He rounds through the others instead, and doesn’t try again to heal you.

“Bethany has gone to the Circle,” Hawke says desolately, face buried in his hands. Anders recoils, nearly knocking himself from Varric’s shorter chairs.

“What happened?” he demands. Hawke shakes his head.

“Mother didn’t know and Bethany wouldn’t say. The way Cullen talked… I really don’t know.”

“Are you at all certain she was found out,” you say, “and not that she went willingly, once you weren’t here to guard her every move.” Hawke’s mouth twists, but Anders turns on you with eyes blazing.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demands furiously. “Didn’t you get along with her? Of course she didn’t go willingly- she’s hardly ignorant of what the Circle means.” But Hawke’s expression darkens, and he says nothing. “She wouldn’t just throw away everything her family’s done to protect her.” And that makes Hawke darken even further.

“Really,” you say. “Not even if she thought to spare them the consequences if she were found out in truth?” You shake your head. “She can at least receive some training-”

“She’s already better trained than more than half the mages she’ll meet there,” Anders says hotly. “And without the risk of two templars around every corner.”

“Bethany Hawke,” you say, “is more than match enough for a couple of templars.”

“Not when they block her magic you thick-headed elf!” You roll your eyes.

“They can’t actually do that. They spread the story to frighten lesser mages and reassure the public.”

Anders stares at you. Even Hawke turns a disbelieving eye your way. Hm.

“I assure you,” Anders says lowly. “They very much can. And when they do-” He presses his lips very firmly together and shoots a glance at Hawke. “Maybe your templars were just decorative; it’s not so here. Why do you think the entire order is addicted to lyrium? They’re useless without it.”

Hawke stands abruptly, Varric’s chair screeching too loudly in the sudden silence.

“Hawke-”

“I’m going to the Maker-forsaken Gallows to find my sister,” he snarls, snatching his sword and storming from Varric’s rooms. You and Anders stare after him for a long moment before you sigh through your nose and rise.

“What are you doing?” Anders demands.

“I will go ensure Hawke doesn’t do anything foolish.” Anders scoffs at that, but he doesn’t say anything more as you depart. He catches up to you before you make it to the docks and is quiet as you cross the harbor.

You stare up at the great statues that cast their long shadows over the Gallows, weeping slaves and their towering masters who must have stood here for centuries. In all those years, they weren’t even melted down for scrap.

“I admit,” you say very quietly. “I’ve not been in any of the southern Circles before now.”

“This is still the City of Chains,” Anders says very bitterly. “Look, Hawke’s over there.”

“This seems unwise for you,” you say. “Being here.” Anders laughs hollowly.

“Undoubtedly- the more so if you keep making comments like that. Come on; let’s catch up before he starts a fight with the knight-captain.”

The Hanged Man is good for public nights, central enough for all Hawke’s friends and truly never dull. It’s the usual place, a neutral place, a place you can nearly pretend you’re all more normal than you are. Sometimes it’s nice. Sometimes it chafes. Sometimes you go to Hawke’s instead- much easier at the manor than Gamlen’s.

Hawke’s place is for- well, you can hardly call them quiet nights, even if they lack the constant background noise of the Hanged Man, but they aren’t so public. By now, the regulars at the Hanged Man know you all, but here if you hide at all it’s because you’re on your better behavior for Leandra. She isn’t always here, though, and sometimes Hawke sends Bodahn and Sandal away, and sometimes you simply slip. The old Amell estate gets quite loud indeed those nights.

If Hawke really minded, though, you think he’d stop insisting you all come over.

You hesitate to say it’s all for the best, because you’re not quite sure how much more you can hear from Fenris, or from Merrill about the particulars of blood magic, before there’s a fight Hawke will actually have to get in the middle of. It’s good to not have to whisper, though. There’s too few places like that. Hawke’s home is as safe as he can make it- and if the only real threat is the company, you all know too many damning things about each other to make bad turns anything but mutual. You all have a knife at each other’s throats, if you care to use it.

You wake, and it hurts. This isn’t unusual, save only in degree, but this is more than the ache of the lyrium threads that trace along your nerves or anchor in your bones. Something pulses, hot and sharp, down the length of one leg from thigh to ankle. You twist just enough to test it and hiss through your teeth. Painful, but not deep. The rest of you is only sore as from the aftermath of battle, all bruises and strained muscles. The stiff flatness of a cot lies beneath you.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Your markings surge to life and you hurl yourself to your feet, hands balling into fists when they don’t find your sword immediately. Fire burns down your leg.

“Hey, be careful! You’re going to pull open the- great. Yeah, like that.”

You lock your leg as it threatens to give out. Something warm and wet slithers down your skin beneath the bandages. “...Anders?” He keeps his hands raised, palm-out and empty, though his face betrays clear exasperation.

“Yes, it’s still me. Will you sit down before you do any more damage to your leg? We’re in my clinic; you’re fine.”

“I don’t need your magic.”

“Yes, you’ve made yourself perfectly clear on that front. Fortunately for you, your injuries weren’t life-threatening and I happen to be a perfectly competent healer without the aid of magic.” He’s still standing back, but a crease is rapidly growing between his eyes as he stares at your leg. “There was no magic involved. Please sit down? I think you pulled the stitches.”

Reluctantly, you sit. Your arms and armor are nearby, now that you look for them. You glance down. The mage appears to be right. Unfortunately.

“Will you let me look at it properly?” You bristle at the words, but… it isn’t sharp, or demanding, or even, truly, that annoyed. He doesn’t even move for his supplies until you stretch out your leg, letting no more of the discomfort show on your face. His staff is nowhere to be seen, but you know better than to think it means he can’t cast.

“You don’t think you’re the first person to come in here afraid of magic, do you?” he asks, dry and wry as he kneels by the cot. His touch is impersonal and firm as he undoes the long bandage-work of your leg, newly soaked again with blood. “Believe it or not, I do know what I’m doing.” He presses lightly at a place near your knee and frowns. “That’s deeper than I’d like,” he murmurs to himself. He checks the rest of the long wound, pronounces it clean, and frowns at your knee again.

“You want to use magic on it,” you say neutrally. You dare not show how much your stomach clenches at the idea. He bites his lip.

“It would be cleaner,” he says by way of admission. “And as much as you fight, I’d be worried that aggravating this might do more permanent damage. It’s up to you.”

“Is it?” you say. Anders heaves a great sigh at your skepticism, but you recall too well your healing before. Danarius was a poor mender himself, but Hadriana was a flesh-sculptor and he kept many in his circle who more than knew a healer’s trade. They never left visible marks.

You wonder sometimes how completely you were remade, both by the ritual and before it. You wonder if you were ever something else. There’s a life you lived before that’s forever lost to you; they could have changed you completely and you’d never know.

You are silent for a long, long time. Anders waits. For all his self-delusion about his demon, you can admit he is a skilled healer- enough so that even the many warring factions of Darktown will call a more-or-less truce here even though none of them keep him on their permanent retainer. He likely isn’t wrong in his assessment.

“Fine. Do it.” His head jerks up in surprise.

“What, really?”

“Before I change my mind, mage.” You are not a fool. There are practicalities to respect here. You can endure the touch of magic for long enough to heal this. If he tries anything else, you will crush his heart in his chest.

“...right.” And he goes to work, describing things you tune out in favor of keeping yourself still without the questionable aid of restraints. His magic sinks into you and the lyrium in your skin surges, greedily drinking up power. The touch of it makes you want to writhe, half an itch and half a prickling that’s unlike the feel of any magic that’s touched you before, but it’s all in your leg and it doesn’t reach for places it shouldn’t. Your marks come dimly alight beneath his ministrations, marking out as clear as the prickling where his magic lies.

Anders frowns, but he pushes on.

“Enough,” you say roughly, when you can feel the cut is sealed and the tingling becomes unbearable.

“It’ll scar,” Anders says. He doesn’t look up, but the magic stills. “Badly, I think.”

“It’s fine. Leave it.” And Anders sighs through his nose, but he retreats. The all-over writhing the touch of slow magic brought vanishes and you nearly sigh in relief. For a time you both sit trembling, quiet in the empty clinic.

The scar is long, and inelegant, and unlovely, but this is a proof that won’t be erased from body or from mind. A thing you lived as this you, not as the phantom of someone you can’t remember and not as a slave. It’s yours.

“Your bedside manner is atrocious,” you say, and hope your voice isn’t as breathless as you feel.

“Funny, most people don’t have any complaints.”

“Most people don’t deal with you as frequently as I.”

“I guess this is my special manner just for you, then.”

A: Why are you doing this anyway?
V: C’mon, Blondie. I’m a storyteller. This is what I do.
A: A professional bullshitter, you mean.
V: Well that too. I’m a dwarf of many talents.
A: But why our story?
V: The only person I know who’d take less work to make an epic about is Hawke. Besides, everyone loves a romance.
F: Surely this one can’t be so fascinating to the masses.
V: You’d be surprised. Anyway, you could use someone blowing smoke. You should’ve been out of the city almost two days ago.
F: Your selflessness is the stuff of legends. We’re leaving tonight.

You’re in Hawke’s sitting room and the others are late and the city is still restless after the near-riot on the stairs of Hightown. It was about Meredith, they said. It was about mutiny. It was about mages.

You’ve been pacing for the better part of an hour, talking. Fenris isn’t listening, but he isn’t interrupting and he isn’t fighting, so you’ll take it.

“...and even Merrill doesn’t care, doesn’t see that we won’t be free until we all-”

“Why should she?” You stop and nearly trip on the rug.

“What?”

“Care.” The look Fenris wears is sharp. Cynical. “What reason does she have to think you and yours will save a place for anyone like her after your grand revolution?”

“All mages includes the Dalish,” you say, but you suspect it’s not the elven part of it that he means. He snorts.

“Perhaps you don’t begrudge her that, but you can’t tell me all your renegade friends will be so kind to the elves once it’s not so convenient to have them as soldiers.” His lip curls. “Your Circles are all that protect some of them from the humans beyond and you know it.” You cast your gaze down.

“Even there it’s… It depends, some, on where you are, and who’s stationed where, but it’s hardly a perfect haven.” On the rare occasion a templar actually did as everyone swears they are meant to and protected an elven mage, it was rarely out of altruism- or without consequences afterwards. You shake yourself roughly. “I’m surprised at you, Fenris. I never thought I’d see the day you spoke up for a blood mage.”

“I’m only pointing out another hole in your endless arguments.” He goes back to staring at the wall, and you go back to pacing, and you wait.

You shouldn’t be surprised. You warned Hawke; you’ve been waiting for something of the sort for four years now. Somehow it still takes you unawares when Anders comes all alight, blue-white cracks running through his skin and his eyes bright stars. Another’s voice overtakes his, furious and fearsome.

Your markings sing. They light without your leave, sharper than they’ve been in ages, and no one has time to notice because the demon that lives in Anders is about to kill a girl, and even mage girls shouldn’t look so scared.

“Anders!” Hawke barks, throwing himself between them. “Get ahold of yourself. She’s not your enemy!” The glow doesn’t die. You gather the power of the lyrium in your skin and force it to pool in your hand, ready to throw all the coiled force of it if need be. “Anders!”

And the thing he calls Justice rages ‘til Anders stumbles back with a cry, the glow under his skin flickering until it goes out all at once and it’s only his eyes again, green and wide and mostly human.

“Oh, Maker,” he gasps. “I would have- if you weren’t here, I-” He stares at you, and at Hawke, and at the girl, wide-eyed and breathless.

And he runs.

“Anders!” Hawke shouts, taking two steps after him, but the mage girl whimpers and he stops, looking back.

“I will follow,” you say, and snort at the wary look Hawke gives you. “I will do nothing foolish unless he does.” And Hawke hesitates, but he nods, and you chase after the abomination on your own.

He has maybe a minute’s head start, but he makes good use of it. You had no idea he could run so fast.

You aren’t sure what to expect when you finally catch up to him- from him, from his demon, from yourself. You lose him between the winding tunnels and the warren-streets of Darktown, but when you look for him at his clinic you do find him, tearing through trunks with a half-packed bag on the floor. He doesn’t even hear you come in, muttering to himself as he is.

“What do you think you’re doing?” you demand. He jumps, then hunches back into himself. He doesn’t stand, and he doesn’t turn to face you.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asks instead of answering. With a mouth full of spite he adds: “You should have taken the opportunity earlier. Even Hawke wouldn’t have objected.”

“Maybe I should have,” you say. And: “He would have.” And: “No.” Anders snorts.

“Well why not, then?”

You can feel your face twist. “What?”

“If you’re not here to kill me, why not?” When you stay silent he adds, bitterly: “I would have killed that girl. You can’t say I wouldn’t have earned it.”

“But you didn’t.” You know not what urge leads you to object, why now it could suddenly matter that he didn’t actually.

“Only thanks to Hawke.” He shakes his head and finally turns around to face you, leaning against the trunks he’s already raided. “And here I thought I could at least count on you to kill me if I lost control.” And amid all the bitter things, that comes out without the least censure, only a great and heavy weariness of a thing that’s been long since accepted.

Something sick and warm churns in your stomach. “I’m not here to kill you, mage,” you spit. “What are you doing? Fleeing?” Anders looks away.

“If none of you will act against me then I should take this opportunity to leave.” He says nothing at all of submitting to the templars. After the display this afternoon, from a man even Bethany thought bad enough to mention in her infrequent letters… you don’t say it either, for once.

“Hawke will find you,” you say instead. Anders’ face creases further into an unhappy frown.

“He wouldn’t stop me,” he says, but there’s an uncertainty there.

“Well he certainly won’t take my word on the matter if I say you wanted to go. He’ll only accept it from your mouth… and he’ll still ask you to stay.”

Anders very nearly laughs, you think, an unpleasant and humorless thing that holds no warmth. “He is just that manner of fool, isn’t he?”

Sometimes the worst part of it all is that you know he’s not an idiot. You’ll even say it to his face one of these days- he must be one of the cleverest people you’ve met. He knows full well there are no more absolutes in discussing mages than in all elves or all humans- by his own admission even!

For all that, you can talk until you’re blue in the face- in either manner- but he won’t relent, always citing the Imperium magisters as if it’s magic that makes men do terrible things. As if that’s enough reason to chain you all up all your lives.

At least he would have been taken care of. He was a favorite, he’s said. He was valuable- and it’s true, he must have a fortune’s worth of lyrium embedded in his skin. There’s no sense in going to all that trouble and not maintaining your weapon. Less than that is just… stupid. Shortsighted. The magisters may be as bereft of morals as anyone else with such positions, but nothing Fenris or anyone else has said has suggested to you that they lack brains.

His master had uses for him, for a bodyguard. Why compromise his ability to do that job?

You think, briefly, of what you saw when you healed him. He said nothing, later, when you asked him about the constant irritation the brands cause his body, but you can’t deny the evidence of your own senses.

(You were favorite once- for a short while. They aren’t half so careful about not breaking you when all the tower is full of other mages.)

(They left you alone after they were done.)

It’s been weeks since the incident in the tunnels under the Gallows. Anders remains. You didn’t stay to hear what Hawke said to him, but when Varric next arranged for a night at the Hanged Man, he was there. It’s strange to see him so subdued, even if it surely won’t last. For now it’s wrong and off-putting and he won’t rise to even the most obvious baits. He drinks very little even when Varric produces a bottle of something much smoother and surely much more expensive than the tavern’s usual brews, and when the cards go away he’s the first to vanish.

It bothers you more this time, the quiet. You think about the tunnels, and how slow he was to share them. You think about what he said in his clinic when you found him. I thought at least you might kill me.

You haven’t made a habit of listening to mages since you ran from Seheron and you have no intention of starting now. You will not. You have fought too hard to give that up. You will die fighting to keep that… or so you tell yourself. Some days you can even believe it.

You go down to Darktown in the evening, when the sun is low enough for a bare quarter hour to slant through the great gaps in the stone and paint it all gold. The sea crashes against the cliffs, echoing over the hum of the living flow of the undercity.

The lanterns are lit outside the clinic but you don’t hear the noise of a crowd. As you approach, one of Anders’ assistants douses the lanterns and shuts the door. She nods to you, and lets you in without a question, and locks the door behind you. You’re all frequent visitors here; you were almost surprised Anders hadn’t said anything to ban you two years ago, but the only thing that’s changed is the degree of familiarity.

“Cam, did you forget-” Anders straightens at one of the long stained tables, back still turned. “Fenris? Has something happened?”

You set your burden down, the heavy crocks within sloshing. “Hawke sent me.”

(V: That’s not what Hawke told me.
F: Quiet, Varric.)

Anders eyes first the crate and then you. “You? With soup?”

“Your absence has been noticed.”

“I haven’t been absent,” he protests defensively. Then: “I didn’t think it would bother you.”

“Hawke asked.” Something scrapes in the outer passages. “It is too quiet; even Varric only has so many stories.”

“Now that I doubt-” Clink.

“Quiet.”

“You were just complaining-”

“Now,” you growl, and the part of you that’s gone still and silent wants to flinch at speaking so to a mag- a mage, but Anders listens, and rises, and follows your wary eyes. The scrape again- metal on metal. Metal on stone. A crowd- too many and too loud to be Hawke’s company. Silently, you move to the gap that serves as a narrow window. Red fills the passages outside the clinic.

You shove Anders back before he can see- or be seen.

“Hey-”

“Quiet,” you hiss, pushing him farther. Whatever his other faults, he at least heeds your instincts, snatching his staff up and gripping it for battle. “Is there another way out of this place?” All of Kirkwall is riddled with bolt-holes, and nowhere more so than Darktown. Surely he didn’t choose the only place without one for his clinic, not when he so fears the templars.

His silence is all too damning.

“Surely you’re joking,” you say in hushed disbelief. “Tell me you’re only hiding it because you don’t trust me.”

“There used to be,” he mutters. Then: “There’s always the windows.”

“That’s at least a thirty foot drop- if you reach the water.”

“There was a cave-in last year. We’ve had to completely redraw the maps, you know.” Yes, Varric’s complained about it loudly and at length. You hadn’t realized it affected Anders, too.

“If you don’t have a better escape in the next two minutes, I will shove you in that excuse for a closet and close the door.”

“You will not.” Power flares from him at that, near enough to make your markings prickle, though the feel of this is different than that of his demon in the tunnels, or that of the things blood mage conjurers pull straight from the Fade.

“There are a dozen templars outside your door,” you hiss. “Even your demon won’t kill them all before they take you.”

“Templars? Here?”

“Quiet.” Even he can hear the rattle of men in full harness now, alternating pale and flush and cracks of blue. “Do you have a way out or not?”

“Hawke… gave me a key,” he admits slowly. “I haven’t checked if the cellars are still intact- but they must be past the door already if we can hear them.”

“Wonderful.” You take his shoulder and snatch a thin blanket from a stack. “Closet it is.”

“No.”

“You can’t think the window is truly an option.” Anders’ lips thin and he eyes the banded-driftwood closet door with distaste.

“You’re trying awfully hard to help today,” he mutters mutinously, but allows you, tensely, to steer him into the laughable excuse for a hiding place. “What about you?”

“They won’t care about me,” you say, throwing the blanket over him.

“They won’t be nice-”

“Keep quiet.” You close the door.

“Fenris!”

A heavy fist pounds on the clinic doors. Anders’ voice dies. You don’t answer. This isn’t your place… and, if fortune favors anyone at all, they will decide nothing’s worth their trouble if no one’s home.

The door splinters under a shining gauntlet.

It’s a losing battle to try to make yourself seem unthreatening, and anyway you were only ever trained the other way. What better shows power than keeping a wild thing tamed? At least this is Darktown; you’re more out of place for being as clean as you are.

“You there, elf,” the first templar through the door commands. “This is the healer’s place, isn’t it? The apostate?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” you say, purging all inflection from your voice. “You are in Darktown.” The templar’s derision echoes from his helm, but the rest of his company mutters in something like agreement.

“Whoever you’re seeking,” you say, leaning against a stone pillar. “There’s no healer here now.” You can feign nonchalance sometimes, despite the readiness to fight. If these templars are any warriors worth fearing, they won’t be fooled. You can only hope they believe your words more.

Instead, heavy attention settles on you.

“What brings you here then, elf?”

“I’m waiting.”

“What for?”

You blame Varric’s influence for what comes out of your mouth. (V: Hey!) “A lover.” Maker, can’t they just decide to believe you or not? This act makes fools of you all.

One of the templars guffaws. “At a healer’s?” the leader says skeptically.

“What?” another says. “Why else would an elf and his lover come to a Darktown healer?”

“I can think of at least three,” the laughing one puts in. None of it is new. It might at least serve your purposes. You incline your head.

The first templar scoffs. “Fine. I have no interest in your affairs.”

“Aw, we’re leaving already?”

“We do have actual work to be about.” It still takes the man several minutes to corral the rest, and longer to remove them. They make some half-hearted show of searching the place anyway, and take the soup, and don’t care enough to come too near you or the closet behind you. Only once the clatter of a dozen suits of plate has faded do you rap sharply on the door.

“Anders,” you say lowly. “They’re gone.” When no response comes, you open the door.

Anders tumbles out in a pile of long limbs and gold hair and thin blanket. You blink.

“They broke your door,” you inform him. Slowly, he pushes himself to his knees and clumsily throws the blanket aside. He’s oddly pale, but it may also be the new-come twilight. The fire’s gone out of Darktown.

After too long a silence, breathy and raspy, he says: “You didn’t tell them.”

“You noticed.” Despite yourself, you hold out a hand. Perhaps despite himself, he takes it. His is clammy and cold. “As I said, I have no intention of killing you- nor humoring their demands without cause.” Some of the lingering distaste escapes, coloring your voice. You grimace. “You’ve lost your soup. If you want a warm meal, you’ll have to come to Hawke’s.”

“Right…” he murmurs. The color is slowly returning to his cheeks and he stares out towards the sky like a starving thing. He glances your way and clears his throat sharply. “...thank you.”

You ignore that, and ignore the undeniable fact that you would have drawn steel if the templars had pressed the matter, and ignore how near to you Anders stands as you make your way back to Hawke’s.

You’re all too tired to face the Hanged Man tonight, stumbling back to Hawke’s filthy and forlorn. Not every mission ends neatly; you learned that among the Wardens. A shame it still holds true.

Unfair, that Hawke’s floor can be more comfortable than your own bed- or maybe it’s just the fire, lit and merry before ever you arrived. The trek back to Darktown seems a greater task than even climbing back into the Deep Roads. Hawke won’t mind if you just rest here for awhile, right? No one else is moving out yet, either. Just a little while.

Fenris’s voice rouses you from your doze, warm from the fire and stiff from the floor. It would probably be a pleasant sound if he weren’t so angry, but he’s usually angry, so you rarely hear the pleasant version.

“Because it’s too easy for any mage to resort to blood magic to get what they want,” he is saying, and ah, you’ve missed something, haven’t you? Well, this part usually goes about the same every time at least.

“It’s really not, though,” Merrill says. You crack an eye to watch her, tucked into one of Hawke’s couches and staring fixedly at Fenris. “Do you know how much of a pain it was? The spirit had to contact the Keeper and I in dreams and even then it took me months to find his cave. Most spirits you see around aren’t any good for magic, and even if you find one who can teach, you have to pay their price- it could take years!”

“You are not proving your point,” Fenris says very tightly.

“Yes I am,” Merrill says, nettled. “You don’t just wake up one morning and go ‘oh, I think I’ll learn blood magic today’- well, some people stumble into it themselves, I suppose, but without a teacher you’re more likely to kill yourself by accident than do any magic, and spirits are the best teachers- and far easier to find than another mage who will admit to knowing anything. Except the crazy ones, but they also make terrible teachers.”

“Enough,” Fenris says. You shift just enough to see him clearly. Something is pinched in his face, in his mouth and the corner of his eyes. You wonder if he's sat down yet.

“If you’re going to hate me for it anyway, you can at least believe I know what I’m talking about.”

Fenris leaves. He turns without another word and marches away, the front door falling shut with an unusual finality.

Merrill sighs defeatedly. “Good job, Merrill,” she mutters to herself. She heaves herself from the couch with none of her usual grace, surely as weary as you. “Do you want the couch, Anders? I’m going home. I’m sure Hawke will be fine, but there’s no reason for you to sleep on the floor if you’re staying. Unless you like it there, I suppose.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” you say. “It is quite comfortable, as far as floors go.” And she laughs a little, and drapes one of Hawke’s heavy quilts over you, and leaves, and you wish not for the first time you could just talk magic with her without the bloodcraft hanging over the whole conversation. At least you’re too tired for it tonight.

It isn’t until morning, stiffer and sorer for a night on the floor, that you replay Fenris’s expression.

He tolerates you and Merrill, mostly, for Hawke’s sake, and you would dare to say he even likes Bethany. He won’t be friendly, it’s been established, but… you never thought he feared you. Not even when he was leery of healing.

You’ve seen him angry, certainly, and contemptuous, and even, occasionally, amused. You only rarely have seen him afraid.

Maybe it was only bad memories surfacing after a day hunting a blood mage who had gone bad. Surely he isn’t always afraid when he’s near you or Merrill.

Half asleep, Justice stirs, and you think unbidden of the sigil of the templars’ burning sword.

Fights in Kirkwall aren’t like true battles, not like things fought by soldiers and not like the swift strikes of the Fog Warriors. These are dirty brawls in narrow alleys, vicious and honorless and brief as summer squalls. You were trained, extensively, in the ways one warrior with a very large sword could hold back a small army. The streets of Kirkwall prove too narrow for these forms as often as not, but today makes up for all the others.

“Anders! Fenris!”

You can’t spare a moment activate your markings, sweeping back another three attackers and buying you a heartbeat’s space. Their blades are short, wicked things, perfectly suited to the alleys of the city but with practically no reach compared to yours. That might spare you long enough for them to run for more archers, or whatever pet mages they might have hidden. You were less concerned about that idea three minutes ago.

You don’t even know whose enemies these are- if they’re any of yours at all and not just opportunists who judged Hawke’s crew very poorly.

Hawke calls for you again, a short way down the alley and into the open market where these will, likely, opt not to follow in daylight. “Where are you?”

You steady your breath and drive the rogues back again, earning the space with another nick on your arm and the bowels of an unarmored footpad. Magic still pulses behind you, steady but weaker than it ought to be.

“Are you done?”

“No,” Anders says, his voice very thin and very tight. The magic wavers and he curses breathlessly.

It had looked ugly. Even with such magic directed to the mess that was made of his knee straight away, you would doubt such a wound could truly heal fully. Down the alley to your left, deeper into the dark and narrow ways to the undercity and beyond, footsteps echo from the shadows. To the right, Hawke is still shouting- and your surviving assailants close ranks between you and the open light.

The great advantage of a corner is that it’s very difficult to sneak up on you. The downside is, of course, everything else about being cornered.

“Fenris!” The others are calling now, too. “Anders! We can’t stay here!”

“We have to go,” you say, backing towards Anders. You can only have a moment before archers arrive- and even if there are no archers, you can’t fight forever.

“If you have the chance, go,” Anders grits out. His hands are still cupped around his knee, but they are shaking. “I won’t be able to keep up.”

You growl despite yourself, and set your markings aglow, and push their power to your hand. The sight isn’t enough on its own to break your enemies, so you gather your strength and push it away from you, loosing a tight wave of force that sends them flying.

“What the-” Anders begins. “Agh-!”

“We are going,” you inform him, hauling him bodily over your shoulder and ignoring the tingling numbness brought on by the proximity of his magic. Beyond the alley, your friends are waiting for you.

Maker, Hawke has made an idiot of you, rescuing mages for no good reason- if there is such a thing at all.

The smoke is still clearing from the city and the bodies are still being gathered and the air still smells like blood. You return to your clinic, expecting the worst, but the Qunari largely left Darktown alone on their march from the docks to Hightown. You have no immediate crisis, so you slump on one of the cots and feel every inch of your aching body at once. Something grinds in your shoulder and you whine, glad no one is here to hear you.

“Anders.”

One person is here to hear you. You didn’t even hear the muted lyrium-song.

“Fenris.” Tiredly, you raise your head. “What is it? Is someone hurt? Are you hurt?” He isn’t moving like he’s being careful how he carries himself, but that doesn’t always mean anything with him.

“I thought my presence might be necessary but,” he surveys the empty clinic. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this place less busy.” You laugh weakly.

“The opportunists are upstairs and the sensible ones stayed home.” You try to roll your shoulder, and grimace, and carefully, carefully try to slip your bloodstained robe from your shoulders.

“What are you doing.” Fenris asks very flatly.

“Oh, relax. Unless you don’t fancy watching me dig around in my own shoulder, in which case I’d recommend departing.” You set the fingers of your other hand against the shoulder that took the brunt of the explosion earlier and feel through your magic for the shards of metal you were forced to seal in still hot to stop the bleeding. Too many and too large to work out with magic alone. You take a deep breath and find your sharpest knife.

“What are you doing?” Fenris demands more sharply, frowning fiercely at you. You shrug, which is a terrible idea, and grit your teeth to not scream as metal digs into bone and muscle.

“The problem with battle healing,” you begin, “is it’s rather miserably easy to seal things up inside a wound.” Magic can cleanse it, usually, but that takes time and focus and power you don’t have to spare in the middle of a pitched fight. Sometimes you don’t have much choice, because the alternative is your friend bleeds out beside you or you lose an arm or you can’t keep fighting at all. This was one of the last. “I appear to have some unwanted metal in my shoulder and I really can’t let it stay there.” Fighting the rest of the day with it there may have already done enough damage. “So,” you raise the knife. “Out it comes. …what?” The look on Fenris’s face is very strange.

“I’m unsure if it was a joke or not, but… Isabela once spoke of a sailor of hers who had a knife break off in his shoulder. She thought my abilities might have been useful to remove it.” Ah. The other massive, fresh sore spot on your little band.

“Would it have been?” you ask, curious despite yourself and really not that eager to begin, no matter how much you know stalling won’t help. “I’ve only seen it in ah, very specific uses.”

“I don’t know,” he says baldly. “My armor is enchanted to move with me- it’s anchored to my markings. I don’t know what would happen if I attempted to pull inert metal through flesh.”

“Right. Well, the rest of my plan is to dig my way to it from the other side anyway.”

“Hmph. I have no great desire to watch that so, if you wish-” His brands come alight, but they are dim in the shadows of Darktown and are slow to stir to life. “-I can… attempt it.”

You don’t know that you do want his glowing hand inside any of your body parts, thank you very much, but if it’s a viable alternative to mangling your shoulder further, you might consider it.

And perhaps you almost believe he has no designs on killing you by now.

You nod and he comes to crouch before you. Justice hums in harmony with the song of the activated brands. “Where are they, and how many?”

“Here.” You guide his hand to the shallowest one, his fingers feather-light against your skin. “It should be just below the surface.” He nods once.

“I imagine this will not be pleasant.” He sends a sudden scowl your way as his brands struggle to brighter activation. “Control your demon.”

“I will,” you say, and grit your teeth, and have no more time to argue as Fenris’s hand slides through your skin and oh, Maker, that’s weird. You can hear the lyrium-song so clearly and Justice sings back to it, and Fenris flares even brighter. You can feel the brush of his fingers against things that were never meant to be touched from that side and nothing you do convinces your body to relax, and you don’t dare touch your magic like this. Fenris’s fingers find the metal, and they pull.

You scream once, short and strangled and surprised more than anything, but Fenris’s hand emerges with a bloody shard of metal that he drops in a pile of rags. “It worked,” you say, breathless and fainter than you should like.

“Where is the next?” His hands are very warm like this.

“Here.”

V: …maybe some stories deserve to be told.
A: But what you’re telling here isn’t really the story.
V: Is it ever?
A: It should be.
V: You know the Chantry’s not going to be telling it your way. Might as well have something going the other direction.
A: …I suppose. Thank you, Varric. For everything.
V: Yeah, yeah. I’m not doing it for your sake, Blondie.
A: Right. Well, thanks anyway.

“There are alchemical ways to assist, and some combination of mundane and magical healing, but there are limits. If you want true flesh-shaping you’d need…” Anders trails off, suddenly comically discomfitted in the midst of discussions of magic and of medicine. You know how to finish his sentence, though.

“Blood magic,” you say at the same time as Merrill. All your friends turn to stare at you both.

“It’s very difficult,” Merrill says. “But if you want to shape a body, it is the most efficient.”

Anders’ eyes slide from Merrill to you. “Many magisters employ it for appearances,” you say. “Cosmetic, mostly. Hiding scars, erasing wrinkles. The sorts of things they think worthy of someone else’s blood.”

“There are some sects in the Chantry that think this manner of modification only a step above blood magic to begin with,” Sebastian says. “Most don’t think this way,” he adds quickly when a few too many eyes fall on him. “And most don’t know to have an opinion on it at all. I don’t know of any Divines who have given an official stance on the matter.”

“I’m sure the young lady in my clinic and everyone like her will be filled with relief to hear it,” Anders says very dryly. Sebastian only shrugs in concession.

You wonder, sometimes, what lies beneath your skin. What lies behind you. You don’t quite mourn that, not the way you do the rest of your forgotten life, but you do wonder.

Anders makes odd comments sometimes, after healing you, about strange connections or things out of place. You wonder how much he might see if you let him look deeper. If you asked him to. You wonder if you want to know.

You are as you are now, and can be no other. You cannot pretend to be anyone but yourself. There is comfort in that, sometimes, but too often it’s followed by the thought that if you were remade once you may be remade again.

“You can’t barter with justice,” Aveline objects one night at Hawke’s, deep in debate with Sebastian and Hawke and less deep in whatever Varric brought up from Lowtown.

“Sure you can,” you put in from where you’re losing (rather spectacularly) to Fenris at some painted board game a patient left you as thanks. “He’s a shit negotiator though.”

“I thought that was all your charm,” Fenris says snidely. He knocks another of your pieces aside. Aveline turns unamused, glittering green eyes on you.

“We have laws for good reason, Anders-”

“Even Justice figured out that just because it’s a rule doesn’t mean it’s right.” Pretty damn quickly, too- especially for a spirit. You know Aveline knows it, too. Some days.

You can feel Fenris’s gaze on you. You take your turn, and wonder what could possibly be surprising about your words, and realize you’re losing even more than you thought.

He doesn’t say anything about the spirit, though. Maybe that’s progress.

“You truly are a different man in the Deep Roads,” you say reflectively, flexing your legs beneath Hawke’s long table. Your markings grumble their protest as your body forces them to stretch. Anders doesn’t raise his head from the table.

“Yes, well, they do make it harder to forget I’m still a Grey Warden.”

“You say quite often that you both are and aren’t one of them. Which is it?”

Anders groans. “I left their order, but you can’t undo the Joining.”

You frown. “It’s… magical, then?” He shrugs a shoulder and winces.

“More or less. It’s not reversible. It’s… hm.” He raises his head then, resting it against his fist as he contemplates the dark windows. “That really is all of it, I suppose. I can hear the darkspawn much more clearly down there. You can’t ignore it.”

“You still keep their secrets,” you note. “I wasn’t under the impression you left on good terms- especially after meeting your friend. Are they always so lax about deserters? They never did pursue you.”

“I probably have the Commander to thank for that- but I don’t hate the Wardens or anything. It just wasn’t for me.”

“Mhm. And did you come to this conclusion before or after accepting your demon?”

“The Wardens are the least likely to care about that,” he says with a dark chuckle. “Anything in service of ending the Blight or preparing for the next one. And besides,” he adds. “Justice was a Grey Warden, too.”

“Right,” you say skeptically. Anders shakes his head and heaves a sigh.

“Ask Nathaniel if you want to know the story that badly. Or Hawke; I think I told him.”

“I was going to ask you.”

“I don’t need to lower your opinion of me any further on purpose.”

“Impossible,” you say, and he actually laughs, and you find your mouth wants to smile back.

“Sure, mages will still need training. Learning you can throw fire is frightening enough on its own without having to be entirely self-taught.”

“If only there were some place mages could be trained safely. Away from flammable fields, perhaps.”

“The Circles are not safe.”

You hear back from your sister, or someone who stands a reasonable chance of being your sister, and you make arrangements. It could be a trap. It may even be likely it’s a trap, but you’re trying to be better at this sort of hope that Hawke’s so enamoured of, at bright sides, and maybe more than that you want this to be real. Maybe if there’s something real from who you were before there’s some chance any part of this could be worth it.

You ask Hawke to come, because trap or no you know him well enough by now to know he’ll stay. He says ok. You give him the details.

“You should tell the others,” he says.

The last thing you want for this is an audience, and the crowd at the Hanged Man will be bad enough- but Hawke isn’t wrong when he says they’ll all hear anyway. It will be doubly true for Varric. You must admit that this way at least they’ll have something nearer the right story.

Rather more dryly, Hawke says, “They might have some support to offer, too.”

You agree they’ll come if Hawke calls.

“I thought you were calling us all friends,” Hawke says.

“Maybe,” you say.

Friends is… difficult, so near this. Friends pry, and friends can be endangered, and should this truly prove the worst sort of trap… you’ve been down that road before. At least Hawke you can be sure will survive- but then again, he is the worst kind of idiot about the people he considers his.

Maybe you should reconsider asking him.

But it’s been years now, and he knows you too well, too, and he says, deadly serious, that he’ll stand by you, and it always proves too easy to believe him.

You say ok.

A mage’s dispelling doesn’t work like a templar’s flat refusal, disrupting the threads between the working and the Fade until it all unravels rather than simply insisting upon itself until the world believes. It’s difficult to do it right, and to do it effectively. It’s practically impossible to do more than temporarily disrupt lyrium-worked enchantments, but against blood magic it’s only very difficult.

Fortunately, you are very good, and very angry, and Justice very much agrees.

You came to the Hanged Man because Hawke asked, and because you do like the place, and out of some deeper curiosity. Hawke said Fenris could use the help. Fenris said, almost eerily flat, that he didn’t need it, but you could do what you wanted.

You’ve known. You’ve known much of this, really, the things Danarius says. Fenris has mentioned them himself. You’ve figured out the rest. The irony of Fenris’s mage sister is fleeting before the rush of the fight, before half a dozen shade-binder mages tear out of a backroom and you and Merrill have all you can handle just to keep them from setting the place alight before your friends can cut them down.

Is that jealousy? Danarius said. Yes, the boy is rather talented, isn’t he? And oh, you know that tone too well, don’t you, too well to care to hear it turned against a friend. Danarius doesn’t join the fight, appearing every inch the cruel magister Fenris has ever made him out to be.

“That’s enough, little wolf,” he says once his underlings are broken or cowed, and of all things you see Fenris freeze. You feel for magic, but there’s nothing. It only lasts a moment before Fenris turns on him, blazing blue, but you think of a sunset pyre on the coast, of words that were one part pity and two parts understanding.

Fenris hurls himself at Danarius, a blue-limned blur of wrath. Danarius gathers magic to him and you strike without waiting to see what it is. The faint surprise on Danarius’s face is the last you see of him before Fenris crushes his heart.

It starts like this…

There's a party at Hawke’s.

This is a proper party, a fancy party. It’s the last of the ones Leandra arranged for before her passing- and so, following, the least planned. It’s the sort of party that’s for the neighbors more than for Hawke, an occasion for the Champion to receive a dozen unwanted advances and a dozen more proposals of more economic nature.

He invites his friends, too. It’s one part defiance and one part a plea for company- or an excuse to remove all these strangers from his house. Oh, the horrors of being wealthy and influential.

It’s something of an occasion that all of them do come, save only Isabela.

Sebastian comes because he’s suited for this sort of thing, and Aveline comes even though she’s not but people expect her. Varric comes to give the event some semblance of life and the rest come out of politeness. Even Bethany is allowed out of the Gallows on special permission and no obvious supervision.

It's a fine party. Normal, even for Hawke. That's probably why Isabela opts to make her entrance when she does.

Oh, did I say Isabela didn’t come to the party? My mistake.

In all fairness, Isabela doesn’t attend the party. She crashes it with every inch of flair anyone could hope for, wild and loud and explosive. It’s the first anyone’s seen of her in close to two years. Hawke is thrilled.

It’s in her chaos that Fenris and Anders slip out, escaping the party without fanfare and wandering Hightown alone. The noise from the manor fades into the soft shadows of the night, quiet now save for their footfalls.

“It’s a long way back to Darktown,” Anders notes. Fenris only rolls his eyes a little.

“You can spend the night here,” he says, stopping before his mansion.

They are hardly strangers in each other’s homes after all these years, visiting and crashing and variously invading. Something is different tonight. Fenris waves Anders to a couch in one of the nicer rooms and checks the cold fireplace.

“You’ve been staring,” Anders says, watching Fenris from the corner of his eye.

“I told Hawke I would watch his mages from the very beginning,” Fenris replies.

“Did you promise to watch my ass?” And Fenris says nothing, and Anders laughs, and the fire comes to life in Fenris’s hearth. “You’ve been staring quite a lot at something you hate.”

“I don’t hate you, mage,” Fenris says shortly. Anders raises an eyebrow.

“Well, if you don’t-hate me that much, come over here and prove it.”

V: What? No comments about how it went?
F: Not like that, that’s for certain.
V: Then tell me how it did go.
F: No.
V: :/
A: You’re just having so much fun with your version, Varric. How could we deprive you of that?
V: You did sneak out that night, though.
A: There was an agent of the Seekers of Truth there- I wasn’t hanging about.
F: More Tevene accents than I cared for.
V: Convenient timing all around.

Anders talks about love in the Circle, about his old lover now Tranquil, about risks.

“It was a game there,” he says, sitting very close to you by the fireside. The others sleep soundly in their tents. “You couldn’t let it be real. It was too dangerous to let the templars know there was something you couldn’t bear to lose.” He falls silent, then, watching the dancing sparks that vanish in the sky.

You think of gold hair in the fog and low laughter by another fire. You think of bodies you left unburied when you fled.

You think about loving mages.

You loved Danarius, sometimes, but those enchantments never lasted the night.

Fenris is too clever for his own good or yours. Whatever it is you’ve had since last summer only makes it worse, only gives him more opportunity to peer into the parts of you the others don’t see. You don’t know if they’ve guessed you’re hiding something, but you’re certain Fenris has. He’s asked- obliquely, for him- but you told him it was mage business in the hopes he’d let it lie. It wasn’t even an untruth. If this goes on much longer he will ask more directly, and you will not have the heart to do more than beg him not to ask for his own sake.

You volunteered for this. The underground accepted it. They will make their own preparations, and you won’t be told of them and you won’t tell them of yours. It’s too dangerous for everyone to know.

It’s differently dangerous for your friends beyond the underground to know. You know what you are risking, but you cannot countenance bringing that down on them by virtue of proximity alone. They would argue against it, and some surely would turn on you. Worse, some might try to help, and that you can allow even less.

It isn’t just, the spirit rumbles in your chest, to play favorites. Why protect them more than anyone else?

Perhaps not, but Maker is it human. You know Justice knows more of that than he likes to admit. You care for them too much to hand them even more danger.

But this must be done. You will do it.

“Fenris, breathe.”

And your skin tingles like it’s been scrubbed with a great, stinging brush, and you breathe. Something sits with strange weight on your chest, and you snatch at it, too clumsy by far- but it’s only Anders’ hand, still alight with power enough to make your own hand numb as if asleep.

“What-” you begin, and cough as your whole chest seizes. Your mouth tastes like blood. Anders’ face hangs over you, tired and dirty and pinched.

“Janeka’s people found us,” he says tersely. He wipes a streak of half-congealed blood half off his face. He grimaces. “Found me, more like.”

“Where-?” Maker’s breath it’s impossible to talk like this, all dust and blood and this infuriating numbness.

“I can’t sense the Wardens anymore. They must have run deeper after we fell. Hawke and the others are still above us, but they’re working their way down.” Anders peers down at you with that narrow, focused intent you’ve never said makes him so nearly resemble the mages whose faces are the first thing you remember in this life. “How bad is it? I can’t see much.”

“Bad,” you grind out, and try not to cough, and fail to keep from coughing as whatever wet thing stuck itself in your chest seeks to claw its way out. It doesn’t stop, and it feels like your chest is burning again, and you can’t even scream about it. Anders’ voice is in your ear and he hasn’t taken his hand from yours. All your body thrills along the lyrium pathways, a vibration that is nearly pain. One half of you demands you fight it, throw off the touch of magic you can feel reaching deep into you. The better-trained half tells you to lie still, that the less you fight the sooner it’s done. The sooner it’s done the sooner it won’t hurt so much.

You keep hold of Anders’ hand and will yourself to stillness. He says nothing about the strength of your grip. You say nothing about the magic. You’re no fool. If he brought magic into this without warning... you think you can believe it was truly this or death.

At least the prickling of his magic keeps you from feeling bone slide against bone or things under your skin prodding you from the wrong direction. It’s not a fast thing, and Anders’ hand trembles when it’s done, the magic leaving all at once as you at last take a clear breath. Anders sits back heavily, breathing faster than even the worst fights can bring out in him. He mutters something that could almost resemble apology. You still can’t find it in you to offer thanks. For a time, you only sit and breathe.

The stone beneath you is the same stuff as the rest of this prison, ancient and dusty and, where you lie, wet with blood. Quite a bit of blood. Above you, stone dust still falls from the great hole the mage Wardens blasted from beneath your feet.

“How is it now?” Anders rasps, voice hoarse and low. It must have been dire indeed to take so much from him.

You shift about, your leathers coming loudly unstuck from the stone as you move. It all still aches, but it’s nothing new. You can sit up without fearing every rib will leap from its place. Mostly. Anders’ hand falls away. You consider.

“I can fight,” you decide. It’s the best you can hope for here. Anders nods heavily.

“If it changes,” he begins in the voice you’ve heard many times now in Darktown. “Tell me and I’ll take a look.” You ignore this, and find your sword, and attempt standing. This is acceptable, so you haul Anders upright and survey the dark, broken hall you find yourself in.

“Which way did Hawke and the others go?” Wearily, Anders points, leaning hard on his staff. The blades at the bottom shriek against the stone.

“Above us, but that way.” Some of the strength has come back to his voice. Soon he’ll be complaining about the Grey Wardens again. He makes a face. “There’s darkspawn nearby.” A problem for the two of you in this state. Your mouth turns down in dissatisfaction.

“I suppose we will hear it when they arrive.” And Anders snorts a laugh, and sinks back to the floor, and you stretch slow and careful until you’re sure of where you stand, near the door where the floor is clearer. Anders watches.

The Darktown warrens don’t exactly sleep at night, but the rhythm of the place changes. If you have less to fear than most from the people who make these their business hours, you still don’t often wander without purpose. Some nights you can even spend like this, quiet in your personal rooms with, for a time, nothing immediate or pressing enough to demand your worry or your work. Tonight is better than most; your mind is quiet and the day was one of little triumphs, the sorts of problems you don’t even need magic to fix.

You should know by now these things don’t last.

You don’t look up from your reading when the part of you that’s Justice stirs, roused by the faint melody of living lyrium. You weren’t expecting him until later.

“Fenris, what are you doing here?”

The rising hum stops, then leaps again in double time as it does when Fenris comes alight and you’re alert at once, your staff in your hand and magic at your fingertips as you steal nearer the door, straining for a sound, for his familiar deep voice or those of your friends. The song of the lyrium surges.

The door to your inner rooms is flimsy wood, though you’ve shored it up with seven years of wards. It shatters in a hail of splinters now, filling your room with a rush of chokedamp. You lash out with a bright rush of power to hold the intruder fast- and it blinks out like a snuffed flame.

No.

It’s a templar’s forbiddance, the field in which they enforce their will on the world and make it so that you cannot change it. The best way to render a mage quite literally powerless- and to know it the whole time.

At least your onetime commander forced you to practice through it. You grip your staff, and shift your hold so the blades face out, and swing.

Two figures hold the doorway that should be your one way out, one limned in blue fire and the other all in shadow and you think No… Even when he hated me most he wouldn’t-

But the one that burns blue isn’t an elf, and the elf behind them isn’t Fenris, and Justice howls louder than any relief that fact could bring. You let him out. Justice is often the better warrior between you, even if he doesn’t rule this body. The stranger that glows like Fenris is better still, though, and him you’ve never trained against and ah, this was always the great weakness of this place, wasn’t it, wards or no, why Hawke pushed so hard for you to stay elsewhere.

There’s always the window.

And then Justice goes out, the forbiddance stifling even him.

You stumble, the world at once faint and spinning and dim as if you were struck over the head, and they approach, the strangers, one bright and one dark, and you can’t say which one is blocking you. You try to fall back, to escape whatever new hell this must be, and you just fall.

All your worst dreams start like this. Most of the worse memories, too. You won’t make it to the window.

It’s never bright in Darktown. By the time they reach you, it’s darker still.

For all they say templars and tranquility are the only way, there are dozens of ways to bind a mage. Any poison-mixer who knows their trade knows the simple ones- dangerous if you want the mage alive, but they’ll do the trick just fine if you’re only scrapping over territory. The Qunari have their own ways. The dwarves built traps. People have been trying to control magic as long as they’ve known it was there.

This is the first you’ve seen one of these.

It’s simple, really- just a couple bracelets around your wrists. A couple shackles. They’re circled with runes inlaid with lyrium, but you can’t hear even the faintest hum of it. Justice is curled up somewhere deep within, far beyond where you can reach him. You have no sense at all of the Fade, as surely as if three templars stood above you.

Even if there were three templars here, you’ve never faced any who were strong enough to drive a wedge between you and Justice, who could separate you so thoroughly. You didn’t think it was possible. Your head is still spinning from it.

They didn’t ask you questions when they left you here. They surely didn’t answer any. It’s enough to wonder if they care at all- as far as you can tell, nothing happened besides transport in the dark between your rooms and the cell.

The cell is… well, it’s a cell. Unremarkable. Nothing fancy- not mage-made nor made to hold them, from what you can see in the half-light of dirty lanterns. It smells better than many cells you’ve seen the inside of. You must not have many neighbors. Your knee protests, stiff. So does your shoulder.

The cell isn’t more than ten feet to a side, all cold stone walls and one heavy, steel-bar door. No one comes for you, good or ill. You can only wait.

You try very, very hard not to think of the dark and the quiet and the crushing empty of your solitary cell deep in the stone that holds up Kinloch Hold.

It must be hours ‘til you hear footsteps in the hall, booted feet on stone and something else dragging behind. Low voices echo down the stone passage, too faint to make out and silenced as they come nearer. You rise, forcing your leg straight. You won’t start bowing before your captors now.

A pale magelight bleaches the grey of the cell nearly white. The one branded like Fenris appears first, a gaunt human woman bearing a slim blade at her side. “Stand back,” she commands, producing a heavy key.

“Who are you?” you demand in turn, straining for magic that won’t come. “What do you want?”

“I said stand back.” Her brands flare, and it hums just within hearing and just a touch discordant. Warily, you take a step back. The clatter of the lock is loud in the cell and the door protests mightily as it swings in. The woman beckons her companion forward- as sturdy an elf as you’ve ever seen, Fenris included, and he hauls another body in and drops it at your feet.

Oh, what fresh hell could this be about?

The door slams shut and you go to your knees beside him before the clean magelight is gone, searching for any obvious wound that could require real attention. You hardly hear the strangers depart.

“...heard from the others?”

“They lost the pirate. Think the ones who went to the alienage are dead.”

“Told them to wait…”

“Fenris,” you hiss under your breath. Blood mats his pale hair and his clothes are torn and dirty. He’s been stripped of arms and armor- and graced with the same gold shackles as you. “Fenris, wake up.” He groans when your fingers ghost over his head. At least you don’t find much worse than a lump.

“Anders?” Fenris mumbles. He’s clumsy as he pushes himself to his knees, wobbling and uncoordinated. From any normal man after a head wound it would be worrying; from Fenris, your pulse spikes in sharp alarm.

“Are you alright?” you ask. Fenris only grunts. He gets himself to a sit, at least, holding his head in his hands.

“Everything is… heavy,” he mutters. He studies his own hand, forcing it steady before his face. His brands are dark. “What is this?” You take a deep breath.

“It can happen with head injuries somet-”

“I know what happens when I’m hit over the head,” he interrupts flatly. “I meant these.”

Right. Well, good to know that much of him is intact. “Mine are suppressing my magic,” you say, tracing the runes on your own shackles. “I couldn’t say for yours- unless they think you’re a mage.” Wouldn’t that be ironic? Fenris’s lip curls at the very thought. From what you can see, though, his shackles are the same as yours. “What happened?”

“They broke in.” Fenris flexes his hands. His brands stay dark. His brow bends. “I’ve… not met many like me who survived the ritual, much less a human. She didn’t fight like any Imperium-trained warrior I’ve known.” Grimacing, he adds: “She’s a mage.”

“She is?” The surprise is sharp in your voice. “Then the elf must be the templar.”

“Templar?”

“One of them certainly was, and if the human is a mage I doubt it’s her.” Even though the Circles barely let mages hold a kitchen knife. Fenris mutters curses and pulls half-heartedly at his shackles.

“Whatever they brought against me, it stole the power from my markings,” he says. “Nothing has felt right since.”

“The heaviness?”

“Mm.”

“That’s… interesting.”

“Is it?”

“Extremely, in fact. The templars’ powers work by… reinforcing reality. They impose their will on this world so that we can’t change it with the Fade. If they’re good enough, we can’t even feel it. If your brands have a connection to the Fade, then they could conceivably be disrupted by a templar.”

“Mm.” He isn’t looking at you, his gaze somewhere in the middle distance, his shoulders stiff. You click your mouth shut.

“It’s likely temporary,” you offer weakly. “Without these shackles or one of them nearby.”

Silence reigns for… quite some time.

“Is he?”

“What?”

“Good enough.”

You breathe deeply. “He managed to cut me off from Justice. He can’t be returned to the Fade, but still…” Such total abjuration is no small feat. “How good a swordsman is she?”

“Very.” Fenris’s mouth curls into something more a smile. “Hawke is better.”

“I thought you were better than Hawke.” You’d even staked a little coin on it with Varric once or twice.

“Some days.” After a moment, he allows: “Most days. He won’t be taken in ambush, though.”

“No?” you say skeptically. “They took both of us, and I’ve not known many more paranoid.” And Hawke’s certainly not one of them.

“I overheard some while they were bringing me here. They want to control Hawke, not catch him.”

You snort. “By what? Kidnapping us?”

“They were after all of us- harder to take than his household maybe, but harder for him to find reinforcements he could trust.” And you can’t argue that, perhaps, but more than one fool has learned the error of their ways trying to cross Hawke. Whoever sent these people, though, they were very well prepared.

“It sounded like they missed Isabela and Merrill at the least.”

“Well, then. They may find more than one unpleasant surprise when they seek out Hawke.”

It’s easier on your heart to dream up all the ways your friends might make your captors miserable than to ponder what traps were laid for each of them, or to worry that you won’t be found or that no one’s looking. You don’t think about your walled-off magic or what a templar might do with you in this state or how much easier those thoughts would come to you alone.

Fenris looks no more comfortable by the third hour than he had in the first. His brands still refuse to light. When you ask him if they still pain him, forced dormant, his silence answers for him.

If anyone told you even a year ago a day like this would find him dozing against your shoulder after another hour's discontented fiddling with the gold shackles, you’d have laughed. Even a month ago, perhaps. You think about taking his hand while he rests. Maybe it might comfort you both- but you don’t know who’s watching. They don’t need any more power over you. You just let Fenris sleep.

It isn’t quiet when Hawke arrives.

Fenris elbows you awake when the clamor starts, steel and screams echoing down the stone corridors. He dances on the balls of his feet as the noise grows, but he still grimaces in distaste every time he flexes his hands and nothing happens. If any others of your friends have been taken, none were added to your cell.

“Well now, boys, isn’t it great to see you haven’t killed each other all afternoon?”

“What’s going on?” Fenris demands immediately. A sharp scream is swallowed by the shadows. Isabela grins, sharp and dangerous and every inch the pirate queen.

“Hawke’s on the warpath,” she says. “Don’t tell me you expected anything less.”

“Get us out.”

“You can have a little more patience, surely,” she teases, producing a key with no great haste. Closer to the door, you can see ugly discoloration around her neck.

“Isabela,” Fenris says warningly.

“Alright, alright, I’m working on it.” The door swings in and in a heartbeat Fenris is out, ears sharp at the sound of fighting. He stumbles on nothing and spits curses at the wall. Isabela eyes him. “How hard did they hit you?” she asks mildly.

“My head is fine,” he growls. He thrusts his hands towards her. “Can you remove these?”

“What, mage-cuffs? For you?” But she brings a lantern nearer and hums. “Sure, shouldn't take a minute. Let me-”

“Hey!”

“Oh, Andraste’s flaming tits,” Isabela spits. “Sebastian, you were supposed to-”

“Never mind,” Fenris says sharply. Some calculating thing comes into his face, and you hate that he must be doing the same math you are. Who of you will be able to fight a second Fenris? “Give me a knife.”

“Fenris-” you start, but he glares you silent.

“Give me a knife and hurry.” He shoves Isabela ungently towards you over her hissed protests. “Undo the damn mage’s shackles.” And Isabela can do the math, too, and she mutters a vicious Rivaini curse and shoves her knives at Fenris.

“I got her on the left leg earlier,” she says. “Don’t die. And don’t lose my knives!” She bends over your shackles as Fenris hurls himself out of sigh. “Not that I object to the idea that you two might, Maker forbid, like each other these days, but it’s really made you both stupider.”

“You’re the one who just handed her weapons away,” you point out, and don’t think too hard about the first part.

“You don’t think those were my only knives, did you?” Click. One golden ring falls. Justice shudders. “Anyway, Hawke’s a terrible influence.” Fenris cries out around the corner.

“Hurry,” you hiss.

“This is hurrying,” she snaps back. Click. “And you should be damn impressed I can do it this fast.” Justice surges forth, painting the cell in blue bright enough Isabela steps back and oh, you really hadn’t realized how much he changed your awareness, your very sense of the world. You can hear the hum of even trace lyrium and feel the edges of the Fade beneath your fingertips more nearly than you could any time except when you walked the place waking. Your magic follows on Justice’s heels and all at once you feel alive again.

Something falls heavily down stone stairs. Someone groans.

“Fenris!”

You can hear the off-key song of the other warrior. A paralyzing spell is already in your hands as you round the corner and you don’t even need to aim it. She has no way to catch herself as your magic drills through all the protection the bright brands grant her and she falls with a terrible crunch on her shoulder- right beside Fenris. Isabela’s borrowed knife tastes blood.

Fenris is bruised and bleeding from too many places, but he shrugs your questions off and offers his hands again to Isabela.

“I’m keeping these,” she says thoughtfully, looping both sets through her belts. “Never know when they might be useful. Pretty, too.”

“Isabela-” you start.

“What? I can leave them here for just anyone to find if you’d rather.”

Blue light fills the stairway as Fenris comes alight.

“If you’re both finished?” he says, dry as the desert over the Vimmark prison.

“Don’t tell me we were the only ones who were actually caught,” you say in a murmur to Isabela as you follow Fenris up the steep, narrow stairs. Your knee throbs; as the euphoria of reunion fades, your magic settles discontentedly back into your bones.

“Aveline will say hers doesn’t count,” Isabela replies. “But she would’ve been in there with you if we hadn’t stumbled across the ones who took her.”

It’s something of a paradox, you think. Hawke does not keep company with fools- and yet, you have all proven yourselves the very worst kinds of fools, and he keeps you all around. These oddities he’s made his boon companions are among the more deadly people you’ve met even counting the greatest magisters, and each of you stays by his side despite every good reason to leave- and this began well before he proved he would fight for you.

Hawke is no fool. He is the greatest fool of you all. Apostates and runaways and half-repentant thieves. What a pack you make, drunk on cheap ale in the common room of the same tavern you’ve been meeting at for seven years. Even Anders is here- and drunk, little as his demon likes it these days. Despite that, he’s dour rather than louder tonight, gilt golden in the light of the slow-swinging chandeliers. He looks better in gold than in blue, you think.

“Do you know what the Right of Annulment is?” he asks in a near-whisper, as if anything less than warhorns would rouse your remaining companions.

“Hm?”

“Annulment. Of a Circle. By the templars.”

“Oh. Yes. Danarius laughed at the idea, once.”

Anders laughs without humor into his cup. “Right, right, your useless templars. Damn, why can’t they all be so impotent?” He drains the last of it, and makes a face. “Eurgh. Why did I let Isabela pick the drinks again?” And you laugh at him, and something almost like life sparks in his eyes, and you wonder what it is he’s not telling you even now.

The hour is late. It’s late at night, too. You are very drunk, and Justice very much disapproves, and you very much don’t care. Three more of the underground went missing last week and you’ve learned only today that they were made Tranquil, and besides all the ways that’s worse than death, no one knows how much they knew. The Tranquil don’t keep secrets. You will have to act soon.

Fenris stares at you, unmoved. Even after all these years, you can’t tell just from looking how deep he is in his own drink. You push down the part that can guess too easily why he’s so good at staying unreadable.

“You still hate mages so much- how many have you given up to the templars over the years?”

“Excuse me?” His voice is low and dangerous, and vibrates in your bones.

“I heard you and Sebastian,” you say defiantly. “Talking about turning us in.”

“Then you heard also that I told him no.” His voice is very tight now and very, very calm. You want to make it snap.

Justice is very close to seizing your magic and burning the alcohol out of you.

“Only because Hawke wouldn’t forgive you for it,” you sneer. “But not every mage is so lucky, are they?”

And then Fenris is in your face, and his eyes are very bright, and the only time you might feel his presence more is when you are inside each other.

“Despite every good reason I have ever had,” he growls, near enough to rumble your chest, “I have said nothing to the damned templars. How many? None.” He pulls back and something in you deflates. “But you are still a fool. Believe what you will.”

And he leaves, and you are alone, and you are very sure you just ruined things. Justice surfaces.

“Sure,” you murmur to the empty alley. “I’ll apologize later. Before… I’ll make time.”

If you are going to have favorites, you must at least treat them well. And you laugh to yourself, harsh and bitter and damnably sober.

V: Well, what are you waiting for?
F: I have my own thanks to give.
V: Yeah well. I won’t pretend to get why you of all people are running off with him, but I don’t wanna see you caught.
F: Isn’t that what this whole story of yours is? Understanding it?
V: Hmph. When’d you get so learned in the ways of writers?
F: Sometime in almost ten years hearing you complain about it, I imagine.
V: Ha!

It ends like this…

The great cathedral that is the Chantry’s crown jewel in Kirkwall sails heavenward, red light and white stone and black smoke painting the city in shades of death.

Death is what’s demanded. The Knight-commander demands it for the mages. Sebastian demands it for Anders- soon all the city will, and anyone of the Circle who survives. And Fenris…

F: Varric… this still isn’t how it happened.

You look at Anders, tense and unhappy and not at all repentant as he waits for judgement and you know. “He wants to die.” You say it as realization; Sebastian takes it as permission, nocking an arrow to his warbow.

You are in front of him before you think, your markings burning as you knock his bow aside.

“I’m only granting his wish,” Sebastian says coldly. You shove him back.

“His life isn’t yours,” you say with just as much ice.

“We are all the Maker’s,” he says, in a tone that suggests it doesn't change much, but he looks at Hawke, and at you, and at Anders again, and decides he won’t forfeit his own life for this. He leaves, but Anders is still staring at you.

“Why did you do that?” he asks, and he sounds as dazed as he did the first night you kissed him. “You and magic-”

“This isn’t about magic,” you snarl. “It’s about you.” You will not have him die, not yet, not with so much still unsaid between you. You would not have him die at all. “I… I will not abandon you.” Because you are the worst of all the fools in this city, with poor enough judgement to love a mage.

“He wants to die,” Fenris says, and you want to cringe at the disappointment there. You hear the slither of wood against wood- and then the lyrium-song surges and Fenris is in Sebastian’s face. You stare at him, and all you can think of is his back walking away from you in the alley, and all you can ask is why.

“You wanted a fight,” Fenris says. “Now you had damned well better fight.”

“To the docks,” Hawke says tersely. “Let’s move.”

And you go as if in a dream, and expect any moment to feel Sebastian’s arrows in your back, but Fenris turns around to glare at you any time you lag too far behind, so you stay on his heels.

“This is what you’ve been brooding over for two weeks?” he demands lowly as you wait for Isabela and Hawke to come around with the small boat you’ll take across the harbor. The others are talking quietly nearby. You sigh through your nose.

“I didn’t want to implicate anyone more than I would already.”

He scoffs. “Yes, fantastic job of that.”

“You don’t have to be here,” you say tiredly, and for some reason that makes his face go very dark.

Hawke calls to you from the boat. It’s time.

Sometimes you curse Kirkwall, and Hawke, and Anders, and everything they’ve ever talked you into. You curse them now, preparing to die in hopeless battle in defense of a pack of mages who have no love for you.

No matter the oversight a power like magic requires, you look at these trembling mages and think that this is a pack of unarmed scholars, people who’ve never been permitted to hold a sword in their lives. They weren’t taught to fight- that’s what the templars are for. Doesn’t that make this part easy, all their garrison being sailed across the harbor in force enough to nullify the only real advantage the mages have.

Even the mages who were meant to be called on by the Chantry in time of war hardly know battle, you realize. They should be sinking the templars’ ships before they can land, throwing fire from the windows and setting barriers in the entries.

You think, then, that for all you’ve done in the company of Hawke and your friends, it’s very likely indeed that you will die here.

V: What if I like this ending better?

It ends like this…

They fight brilliantly together, each empowering the other until Fenris blurs across the Gallows courtyard and shatters the ancient Tevinter statues, until Anders’ ice coats the stone and sends Meredith’s last loyal templars crashing to the ground. It is, pardon the phrasing, magical to behold.

And finally it’s over, and the revolt’s truly begun, and their own little circle scatters. Some take ship and some go by foot, alone or in twos or trailing half of Kirkwall’s mages behind them.

Anders and Fenris vanish hand in hand into the secret tunnels beneath the Gallows, the same ones that have led slave and mage alike to freedom.