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Skyhold was a wreck. Hawke wasn't sure what he'd been expecting of the miracle castle in the middle of the Frostbacks - he'd heard it had come to the Herald of Andraste during the Inquisition's hour of need in a dream, and having had a chance to look around before Varric tracked him down, he could only conclude it had been one of those strange dreams, with the stairs that changed directions and the thousands of tiny spiders with human teeth.

The battlements were cracked and blasted, like some great war had been fought here - like a giant with a hammer had taken swings out of the very stonework, or some enterprising qunari had found a way to haul a dreadnought some hundreds of miles ashore. Magic, possibly, although Hawke wasn't sure any mages outside of Tevinter knew how to do this much damage. It certainly wasn't Circle-approved. He knew better than to say so to the Herald of Andraste - who had, at some point during his long trek up the mountainside, become the Inquisitor, apparently - and in any case suspected she wouldn't much care.

He didn't know what he'd expected of her. He knew what the rumour mill said - that she was blessed by Andraste herself, that she'd survived the destruction at the Conclave with nothing more than a scratch, and a fragment of Andraste's own power that she used to close those bloody rifts that had popped up everywhere in the south. She was forty foot tall, breathed lightning and farted fire, apparently.

The rumour mill hadn't mentioned that she was an elf. A Dalish one, at that, who wore the vallasin on her face without apology despite all the sunburst banners hanging from the walls of her rotting, nightmare-spawned castle. A fierce one, mind - but not exactly someone he'd have expected Our Lady to have had much to do with.

Varric's letters had been a little more helpful, although not much. At first he'd thought their cipher had been compromised - the handwriting was the same, but suddenly Varric had begun writing to him about hope, and the Inquisition as a second chance. Hawke still wasn't entirely clear what had happened to the first one. Whoever she was, Varric seemed to regard the Inquisitor with affection, and that had been ultimately what had led Hawke here, to this faded old keep and to playing 20-questions with the leader of the largest private standing army in the south.

It was so large its soldiers spilled out of the walls of Skyhold itself, and had pitched tents all over the valley underneath it. At night as he'd ridden in the torches had been beyond counting, a hundred cookfires going. The tents ranged from the ramshackle things brought by individual men and women, signed up from the bannorn - to the grand campaign pavilions pitched on the east side of the encampment belonging to the Inquisiton's templars, which he understand they shared with its loyalist mages. The Sword of Mercy flew proudly from specially-built flagpoles along with the intact ring symbol of the Circle, and the few people based in those tents navigated their makeshift city with a straight back and stiff shoulders. It all looked very grand and imposing.

Not so much the rebel mage tents, on the west side - a whole army between them. The shattered Circle symbol of the rebellion had been crudely painted on the side of some dirty, haphazard tents stacked around the worst campfires Hawke had ever seen, but there were so many people it made him smile more than anything. The inquisitor had invited Fiona's people in as full allies, he'd heard - and they'd come as asked, hundreds of them, learning how to pitch tents that wouldn't collapse at the first stiff breeze and how to do laundry and cook food and live without supervision.

Nobody had said it was easy. Anders himself had said it would be a struggle. "But," he'd said once, late at night and tucked up in bed, talking as they often did of the future they wanted together, "It's a struggle that must be fought, love. Nothing is gained from treating mages like children. We must be allowed to fail, as any person must. Only then can we learn to live for ourselves, out from under Chantry control."

Hawke had thought it was the truest thing he'd said that day, and not just because they'd had another argument about Anders forgetting to put his socks in the laundry basket.

Looking out over the encampment, Hawke had understood.

The situation was marginally better in Skyhold itself. Masons and carpenters scurried everywhere, and twice in the last five minutes Varric had ducked under the battlements as a seethe of dwarven workmen went past. Hawke wasn't sure whether it was a monies owed thing or a sisters wooed thing, and didn't ask. He nudged Varric once they'd gone and said, "Safe."

"Thank the Stone," Varric muttered. "It's not good for my heart, you know that."

"And here I thought I was your one and only," Hawke joked, batting his eyelashes, and won a weary chuckle for it. "Can't be much of a problem. This castle's full of holes, you shouldn't be short on places to hide."

"Don't," Varric warned.

"'Short'!" Hawke turned with his back to the battlements. "Maker, I crack myself up."

"See, this? I didn't miss this." Varric elbowed him in the thigh, mostly to remind him that his elbows were at groin range and this was the least of what he could do, and Hawke grinned and waved an apology.

"Just blown away by the scale of your upgrade," he said. "I mean, a man could start to feel insecure, Varric. I'm many things, but not closing-Fade-rifts blessed-by-Andraste-herself things. And I definitely can't give you a whole castle."

"It's no Hanged Man," Varric allowed, but what Skyhold was he didn't elaborate.

"Does it have no beer anywhere on the premises?" Hawke folded his arms over his chest. "I came all this way and I'd like to at least wet my throat before I depart for Crestwood. It's a shithole, you know. As in, more so than Kirkwall was."

"You take that back," Varric said. "Kirkwall's the jewel of the Free Marches. You know, once you blow off the dust -"

"- And the smog, and the chokedamp, and the grim feeling of being watched by all those creepy statues commemorating the slave trade," Hawke added helpfully.

"And the blood magic, and the red lyrium," Varric said. "And the -" and then he visibly stopped himself, and Hawke knew why: and the pieces of the Chantry. Still mad. He wouldn't even talk to Anders in his letters; they were addressed to Hawke and Hawke alone, and if he did mention 'Blondie' it was only ever by description. Tell that apostate you keep around the Chantry's still looking for him.

How did you mend a rift, Hawke wondered, between the man you loved and your best friend? Could you? Should you even try? Anders would never in a million years apologise for it. Varric would never in a million years forgive him if he didn't. They'd been close, once. Anders had tried to leave his mother's pillow with Varric, back when he expected Hawke to execute him, like that was a normal thing to expect your lover to do. Hawke had no idea how to close that gap, but knew it wouldn't start here, today. Instead he pulled a face and said, "Thanks for the traumatic memories. Now I definitely need that beer."

"There might be a couple of kegs," Varric allowed, "They're talking about setting up an inn in the west side of the courtyard. Not sure what the building used to be. Right now it doesn't have a ceiling, but..."

"... Most of the time neither did the Hanged Man," Hawke agreed. "Sounds like it'll do. Hope you're paying, I'm somewhat between jobs at the moment."

Varric exhaled, dramatically, and pressed his palm against his densely furred chest. "Some things never change. You'll have to settle your bar tab eventually, Hawke."

"Isabela never did," Hawke said.

"Isabela threatened to stab Corff in the eye if he asked her again," said Varric. "Then she banged him like a screen door in the basement, so I really don't think that's going to work with me."

"Is that a promise?"

"Yes."

He sighed heavily. "Once again, you smash my heart to pieces," he said. "I'll live, but only with beer."

Varric shook his head, but he led the way, so really Hawke counted it as a win.

The inn-to-be was swarming with carpenters and men with fussy haircuts that Hawke assumed were architects or something, based on his long experience of Kirkwall's post-Qunari reconstruction. The kegs had been deposited outside the entrance way, and had already been tapped by the time they got there by a large one-eyed Qunari, who eyed them thoughtfully but said nothing until they'd collected their drinks and made to wander off with them.

"Yo, Varric," he'd said. "Coming to cards later?"

"Wouldn't miss it, Tiny," Varric said, like he and the qunari were friends or something, which was fine.

"So," Hawke said, once they were safely well away from the hearing of giant horned men who had very frequently tried to kill him back in Kirkwall. "Qunari?"

"Ben Hassrath," said Varric, like that wasn't pant-wettingly terrifying. "They want an eye kept on the Inquisition, and the Iron Bull was already in Ferelden, so..."

"Hmm," said Hawke. This was a total non-problem. It was a total non-problem that a Ben Hassrath agent was here, in Skyhold, in close proximity to where he, Hawke was staying - after all, he'd only killed the Arishok and very publicly supported Anders, the man who'd built an explosive of destructive power sufficient to dwarf the famous gaatlok, whose recipe the Ben Hassrath killed people to protect. Neither of these things was likely to interest the Qun, not even slightly! This was fine.

Varric was still talking - something punny about the Ben Hassrath agent only having one eye to keep on the Inquisition, and therefore Hawke would be fine - and so Hawke drank his beer, which was warm and flat and better than a (dagger in the dark) slap in the face, and thought wildly about whether or not he should leave for Crestwood tonight or wait until the morning. Varric seemed to think the one-eyed Qunari was the only Ben Hassrath agent in Skyhold. From what Hawke remembered of Tallis, that was the furthest from the truth.

They were sitting on a storage chest left out in the middle of the courtyard. It was the strangest thing - they were on a peak atop the Frostbacks, and it was so cold climbing the winding mountain trail to get here that Hawke had had to stuff sackcloth down his boots to protect his toes - but around them fresh green grass shivered in a gentle breeze. Some of the workmen sweeping out what he guessed would be the armory had stripped to the waist.

Skyhold wasn't the Hanged Man, but at least the Hanged Man was a known quantity. It was a shitty pub. It probably had had Ben Hassrath agents in it back then, too, on the grounds that the Ben Hassrath were bloody everywhere and their chief weapon was surprise - but it had still felt safe. He wondered that Varric couldn't feel it. He wondered if that was why the rebel and loyalist mages alike had set up camp outside its walls, in the valley that Skyhold overlooked.

Back in Kirkwall Varric had seemed almost all-knowing. What he couldn't find out on the grapevine, he found out through a network of paid informants that Hawke often suspected begun with the city's urchin children and ended in the carrion crows that lived on Hightown's rooftops and, unfortunately, often shat down his bedroom chimney. It was strange to see him here, drinking a warm beer and talking about a Dalish elf held up as the Chantry's hero, Meredith's Second, and a Ben Hassrath agent like they were friends.

Maybe it was just strange to him to see Varric outside of his city. It wasn't exactly like they'd gone on many trips. The Deep Roads had been a disaster, and so had that bloody wyvern hunt, and then the whole nasty business with Corypheus that had brought Hawke here to begin with...

Or, he thought, taking another sip of his shit beer, you're anxious because you don't have Anders here with you.

Everywhere he went, Anders went. To the Deep Roads. To that bloody wyvern hunt. In the dank and crushing depths of Corypheus' prison. Hawke's magic wasn't the gentle, nurturing kind; he crushed and burned and electrocuted, and on at least one memorable but exhilarating occasion, exploded. Anders had always been there to keep his back, to catch him when he fell, and the last time he hadn't - the fight against the Arishok - Hawke had nearly died. Maybe that was why Skyhold gave him the willies. Why he was overreacting to a single Qunari. Why sitting in a sunny courtyard sharing terrible beer with Varric didn't feel like it ought.

He realised he hadn't responded to Varric's latest quip only after he finished his beer and realised he had done so in silence. Varric had set his tankard down between his feet and was watching him with a strange expression on his face, something knowing and yet, unimpressed. It wasn't something Hawke had much familiarity with. "What?" he said. "Don't tell me. I haven't got something on my face?" He touched the streak of red kaddis over his nose.

"Where'd you leave him?" said Varric.

Hawke picked at the handle of the tankard. He thought about being a wiseass but Maker's balls, he was tired of being that all the time. Instead he said, "I sent him north. Sent the whole family north. I don't know where they are." The handle was pewter, and had no easy footholds to dig a thumbnail into. "Wasn't sure what kind of a reception I'd get, walking headfirst into the Chantry's newest army. Didn't want to say something I wouldn't." The fingers of his left hand came up and pressed into the centre of his forehead, meaningfully.

Varric's jaw tightened. "I wouldn't've let them do that to you."

"Flattered, but if the Inquisitor had been a little more like Meredith... I don't think that would have mattered." Some of the mages in the Gallows had had rich parents. Ultimately it had meant nothing.

"You sound like him," said Varric, a little disapprovingly. He cocked his head to one side. "Not everyone thinks about oppressing mages all day."

"No," said Hawke, "Mostly they don't think about us at all."

Varric sighed like Hawke was just being difficult rather than honest. Fear of Tranquility had been a mainstay of his childhood dreams, cropping up almost as many times as the spiders with human teeth. It wasn't until he had met Anders in that Chantry - seen what they had done to Karl, but moreover, how Anders' other half had paused it, and even, temporarily, reversed it - that he had begun to think of it as anything other than certain death. Still, it came to him from time to time, half-formed ghosts haunting his sleeping mind - his lover and his sister and his father all blank-eyed and branded.

Hard to explain the terror Tranquility caused to a dwarf who didn't even dream and who had entered the Fade all of once in his life - consciously, at Hawke's request - and who had immediately betrayed Hawke to the first demon to speak to him. Not that Hawke held a grudge. Varric hadn't been the only one to turn from him at the first encounter with the demons Hawke had lived with for as long as he could remember. At the end of it only Justice had stayed true, calm and implacable in a world that shifted and turned.

"I'm not here to proselytize," Hawke said, holding up a hand. "Corypheus comes first. I know that. Anders and I know that."

"As long as he's not around," Varric said. "Last thing we need is Starkhaven getting wind of it. You being here is enough."

"Is that likely?"

Varric shrugged. "Depends on how native Choir Boy's gone," he said. "I'd've said he was too damn righteous for all that espionage shit, but he really wants Blondie's head, so."

"Me too," said Hawke mildly. "On his shoulders. And Varric - there's not much I wouldn't do to keep it there."

Varric threw his hands up. His mouth was a flat, unhappy line. They'd last talked about this not long after that fateful night - Hawke preparing to flee Kirkwall in the rubble and the ash of the aftermath, Varric urging him to be careful. He'll get you killed, he'd said. Hawke, his war isn't going to stop here.

It's my war too, Hawke had said. Has been from the start. I'm a mage, Varric. I'm the son and brother of mages. My father could've been in that Circle. My sister. I didn't know what he was going to do today, but Varric, I wouldn't ever leave him to fight alone.

Varric hadn't argued with him then, but Hawke could tell he'd wanted to. He looked like he still wanted to, even now, but he bit down on it. Hawke understood why. He loved Anders. Varric had loved Kirkwall. They were both deep loves, and in the aftermath of their clash both Hawke and Varric had resolved - silently, and without discussion - to not talk about it. This conversation was skirting too close to that line, that deep and unhealed wound in their friendship. "That's your business, Hawke," Varric said, and Hawke knew how much it cost him not to say more.

He turned the tankard in his hands. Varric finished his and placed it on the storage chest between them; he folded his hands in his lap and looked up at the bright blue sky, and the silence rang clear as the Chantry bell. They'd never had this kind of silence between them before. Hawke wasn't sure if he'd change it. Instead he said, "It's a four-day walk to Crestwood from here, unless you think I can sweet talk the Inquisition into lending me a horse."

"You couldn't," said Varric, and grinned mercilessly. "I've met you. Remember the time you gave those bones back to that Chantry brother...? What did you say to him, again?"

"'Your garbage, Serah,'" Hawke said, somewhat sheepishly. "In my defence I thought they were, you know, metaphorical bones. Not the actual body of an actual colleague of his."

"Genuinely surprised they let you back in," Varric mused.

"Silver tongued," Hawke said, and winked. "Point me in the right direction and I'll get me a nag, just you watch."

Varric snorted. "You'll want Horsemaster Dennet," he said. He turned his tankard upside down to empty the dregs; Hawke did the same, and stacked their tankards side by side on the chest. "Are you heading out tonight?"

"Time waits for no man," said Hawke. He stood up, stretching. His calves and thighs ached from the walk uphill, but if he could get himself a horse... "Or dashingly handsome ex-Champion of Kirkwall."

"You know," Varric muses, "I don't think anyone ever officially stripped you of that title."

"I'll make sure to include it in all my official correspondence," said Hawke. He paused. Down in the actual courtyard - away from the bird's eye view of the battlements - Skyhold's layout was baffling; he couldn't see anywhere near the one-day-inn that looked like a stable block. "Another beer first? Then you can show me the way to the stables."

"You know what, I'll drink to that," said Varric. He smiled, and it looked very nearly like it had back in Kirkwall - roguish, like he knew more than anyone else in the room and cared less about anything that might hurt him. Hawke couldn't believe he'd ever fallen for it. No wonder Varric used to clean him out at Diamondback so regularly. "This time, Hawke, you're paying."

Crestwood was a shit show from start to finish. The Inquisitor - still not hugely talkative, and clearly fed up with what she had derisively called 'shem shit' - had gone ahead with Loghain, partially so that Mac Tir could repeat his story concerning the false Calling to her advisors and, Hawke suspected, for political reasons relating to the King of Ferelden, who was purportedly not the biggest fan of either Loghain nor the Inquisition.

Hawke had said he'd join them for a debrief, but that he needed to stop off and speak to some people in Skyhold first, which had earned him a long, hard look from the so-called Herald of Andraste and a harsh warning to make sure he gave the borrowed horse back. He couldn't remember what he said. It hadn't been at the forefront of his mind.

The Calling had been.

Larius had heard it, down in Corypheus' prison. Carver and Anders had seemed to recognise it in him, and regarded him with an unease that made sense. To Hawke and Varric the ghoul had been an ugly, corrupted thing, a reminder of the dangers the Blight potentially could inflict - but to them it had been a reminder of their futures.

Anders had told him thirty years. He'd said thirty years. It hadn't been a promise, but he'd believed it, and so Hawke had too and that was… nearly the same thing. This year - this would be Anders' tenth? And Carver's eighth?

He didn't know. His head swam. Loghain had said all the Wardens in Orlais were hearing it. Was that possible? Did that mean all the Wardens in Orlais were…?

Carver and Anders had gone north. And he didn't know where. But he did know who could find out.

Skyhold had a pack of messenger ravens, but they were only to be used for official business - so it was Varric Hawke went to first, pulling up outside the grand entrance hall of the keep and throwing his horse's reins half-heartedly over a bush, where it would wander off but someone would find it and probably take it back to the stables. The hall was in a better condition than it had been when he had left - most of the trash had been swept out, and the larger pieces of stone removed. Wooden scaffolding extended from floor to ceiling. People in dresses and tunics far too fine to be masons mingled around, gossiping.

At the far end of the hall, facing the huge double doors, sat a throne. That was new, too. It was humbler than the throne in the Viscount's Keep back at Kirkwall, but it was very clearly a throne, flanked on both sides by towering, imposing statues. Hawke eyed it with mistrust. Thrones were never a good sign.

Varric had a desk set up down a side passage, in a corridor that functioned as a makeshift office. He had his boots up on an empty seat and was wearing his reading spectacles as he pored over a book with his own picture on the back cover, looking thunderous. When Hawke slipped into the other empty seat on the other side of his desk, he visibly jumped. "Stone's breath, Hawke - give a dwarf some warning."

"Crestwood was lovely," Hawke said. "You should have been there. Haunted swamps - your favourite."

"Absolutely not," said Varric, and tossed the book down on the desk. There was a woman who looked suspiciously like Aveline flexing on the front cover, but Hawke didn't have time to ask Varric why he was digging out his older works for a reread - instead he leaned across the desk and said, "I need to get a letter to Carver."

"You told me you don't know where he is."

"He's Carver," and Anders, who had been caught six times fleeing the Circle and glowed in the dark. "He's not very imaginative. I'm sure a talented dwarf who also happens to be a crack shot and Thedas' best writer could find him for me."

"Flattery," said Varric, "Will get you everywhere. He was in Nevarra a week ago. What do you need?"

"He was - what?"

Varric shrugged. "I got curious."

Hawke drummed his fingers on the desk. "Should I be flattered or scared that you're keeping tabs on my family?"

"Bit of both?" Varric made a see-sawing gesture in the air with his hand. "Besides, Junior's a six foot whatever pain in the ass. He doesn't exactly blend in with a crowd. I can get him a message but it'll take about three weeks to reach him. Sister Nightingale won't let me borrow her birds, which sucks."

"I just need you to tell him to stay put," said Hawke. "Not to travel south. Not to travel to Orlais."

Varric picked up a quill, but didn't pop the lid off the bottle of ink next to it. "Can I ask why, Hawke? You know Junior never does what he's told."

Hawke leaned back in the chair, grinding his teeth; Varric had a point. If he sent Carver a message that said ‘don't go to Orlais' Carver would be in Val Royeux by the next morning, probably while wearing a tabard that said FUCK YOU GARRETT printed on it. Anders, on the other hand… "Just say that there's danger in Orlais, and that Carver should…" don't say ‘listen to Anders,' because he categorically wouldn't… "Travel in a group."

It was a terrible message. Varric's face said it was a terrible message. Hawke didn't know what else to say. "Also ask him to give my love to the dog."

"Just the dog?" Dog was a good boy and Carver was nicer to him than he was to Hawke or Anders combined, which was something, but Hawke knew better than to push his luck.

"I mean, you-know-who too, but Carver absolutely will not do that."

Varric carefully wrote the message down in a way that managed to somehow seem sarcastic. "This have anything to do with Loghain in the War Room talking Curly's ear off about the Western Approach?"

"Possibly," Hawke said. "Why, what's in the Western Approach?"

"Sand, shit, and sunburn," Varric said. "Inquisitor's looking to arrange a group. She asked me but I said it wasn't my department." He scratched at his chin with the quill, which rasped as it rubbed against the bristles of his unchecked stubble. "She's under the impression you're going with her, though."

"It's Corypheus," said Hawke. "He's - loosely speaking - my problem."

Varric sighed. "Well, shit," he said. "When you say it like that, I guess he's mine too." He blew on the wet ink of Hawke's pathetic message and looked pensieve. "Blondie told me once the key to avoiding sunburn is not being in the sun."

"Sometimes," said Hawke, grandly, "A little sunburn is necessary. That's what I want on my tombstone when I snuff it, by the way. The memorable quote that summarises my life."

"Still better than ‘your garbage, Serah,'" Varric said. "Are you going to join Mac Tir for the debrief?"

"Eventually. I haven't slept since - " He paused. He had slept at some point, but Maker knew how long ago it had been. It had been on the floor, under his travelling cloak, and the horse had been with him so it couldn't've been that long ago. "Since I last slept," he finished.

Varric managed to look amused, disappointed, and exasperated all at once, which was an incredibly impressive thing to manage on a face two thirds the size of a human's. "Nobody's got sleeping quarters yet - 'cept the Inquisitor, of course - but I've got a spot of floor you can snooze on in the main hall. Been reserving it for myself, but I don't mind sharing."

"Is it a human-sized spot of floor?"

"Hawke, you wound me," Varric laughed. "It's big enough for me and for those special someones who somehow still send me dinner invitations through the Merchant's Guild."

Hawke snorted. "Ah, to be a footloose and fancy free bachelor once again. On the other hand, Anders and I haven't any complaints."

"Good for you," said Varric. "I'm not writing you a sequel. So, floor?"

It did seem tempting. But presumably the Ben Hassrath agent was still here and knew where Varric slept, and after weighing the options in his mind, Hawke said, "I think I'll pitch up in the valley with the rest of the commoners tonight, Varric. But thank you for the offer."

"Suit yourself," said Varric. "Come find me after the debrief. I'll get this message sent and then treat you to dinner. They've got the inn up and running - no furniture, just crates - and the cook makes a rat stew that'll make your heart sing for the Hanged Man."

Hawke ‘favourite' thing about Corff's rat stew was that he wasn't entirely sure it was all rat. Isabela had had seventy silvers on it being at least a quarter urchin. Fenris had chipped in a whole sovereign on the possibility of it containing at least some Coterie victim. Anders had just eaten it without complaint. "In Darktown," he'd said, "It's never wholly rat anyway. Sometimes a mystery is a good thing."

Hawke knew he didn't miss the rat stew, or the Hanged Man itself. He didn't miss the holes in the ceiling, or the templars clanking their way through the streets of Kirkwall, or timing his visits to Anders so that he wouldn't get mugged by the Carta as he passed through Darktown. It was just nostalgia in action. He knew that, but sometimes it was hard to make his heart catch up with the program.

He eyed the rolled up scroll on Varric's desk. Three weeks. Anything could happen in that time, but he had to hope it wouldn't. "Sure," he said. "So long as you're paying. You'll be here when I get out?"

"Usually am," Varric said. He was melting a stick of wax over the message, sealing it shut; his personal seal lay on the desk beside him. It didn't resemble the seal he'd used for official correspondence back in Kirkwall, but that had probably burned with the rest of the Hanged Man.

"Good. Looking forward to hearing why you were nose-deep in Swords and Shields when I get out. It was never one of your finest."

"Everyone's a critic," Varric said, sighing. "And don't worry, Hawke. I'll make sure this letter gets where it needs to go." He paused. "To whom it needs to go."

Hawke stood up and pushed in his chair. "Have I ever told you you're my favourite dwarf?" He didn't wait for a response before heading back along the corridor, to that sinister throne room.

Varric's call of "Not often enough!" caught him before he made it, but that was about right.

The sun was going down by the time Hawke staggered into the main encampment, pleasantly soused and unfortunately, a little bit poorer. Turned out Varric got his beer on credit, as a member of the Inquisition's so-called Inner Circle; Hawke got his with coin, just like everyone else.

He did at least have a tent now. It was more of a lean-to, just large enough for a couple of soldiers to sleep in it side by side; it had been Varric's but, now that Skyhold was vaguely habitable, it was his. He wasn't sure how to put it up but he'd work on that when he found a place to put it.

Down in the actual thick of it the army encampment wasn't nearly so pretty as it had looked from the battlements of Skyhold. Soldiers weren't exactly quiet creatures, and even at dusk the camp was full of noise and people; the forge tents were still hard at work, and the training lists, and the mess tents had queues right out the door. Hawke spotted one particular tent with a bright red scarf wound around the lintel and wasn't entirely sure if it was a barber's or a brothel but either way, it looked popular.

He gave the templar half of the encampment a wide berth. He was ostensibly here at the Inquisitor's request, but as with the Ben Hassrath agent, some things weren't worth quibbling about. Instead he schlepped across the muddy ground to the rebel mage encampment, reasoning that he'd stand out less amongst a group who stood out entirely, and nobody watched him go.

The rebel mage encampment had no clear design or outline. Tents were pitched wherever they fit, and some had already collapsed when the tent pegs came loose from the soft, muddy ground. The walkways between the sturdier tents were narrow and in come cases cluttered with clothing lines, water barrels, staffs left literally in the path and, for no reason Hawke could tell, chickens, which clucked around the camp with the self-satisfied strut that only a chicken (and/or Sister Petrice) could execute appropriately. There were mages all over of all ages - some still wearing shabby-looking Circle robes, others in boiled leather and leggings. Books rested atop chests sinking into the mud, and mages clustered around campfires sitting on rotting, half-submerged logs and looking like - well. Like people.

Some of them were clearly thrilled to be there. Others were finding living independently a struggle. And some clearly yearned to be back in their warm, dry circles, but nevertheless they were there, and they were alive. Nobody stopped Hawke as he walked through their camp. He supposed they must be used to mages coming and going.

He pitched his tent on the edge of the camp, amidst a cluster of very similar-looking tents. It was a struggle to work out how - but someone had left a carpenter's mallet just lying around in what he had learned to recognise was the thoughtlessness of a Circle mage who expected a Tranquil to put away his or her tools once they were finished with them, and it made the job a lot easier. It didn't have to stay up long. They'd be leaving for the Western Approach by the end of the week, the Inquisitor had said, perhaps sooner if they could gather the supplies for the trip. The Inquisition was too new to field its own baggage train, but Lady Montilyet had requested help from some nobles along the way.

He was so engrossed in the general tasks of making camp - lining his tent so that there was something between him and the ground, arranging his sleeping roll and his bag - that he barely noticed the sun going down. It wasn't like it made it any harder to see. All around the camp a hundred balls of veilfire sprang to life with barely a whisper, until the camp seemed full of oversized fireflies bobbing and weaving along the walkways, and when Hawke realised that was what provided the light he had to stop and stare.

He'd never seen anything like it before. He'd learned how to summon magelight as one of the first things he'd been taught as a child, but his father had always impressed upon both he and Bethany that magelights were for emergencies - that they were to be summoned as a last resort and a last resort only. "If someone sees," he said, "It's a clear indicator of magic - probably the clearest one there is. Templars will follow soon after, and so you should only cast light if you need it."

Anders hadn't needed any. His whole body was a magelight - burning gorgeous sapphire blue flames that licked over Hawke's skin without fear. How many times had he had the curtains closed and the fires extinguished in their bedroom, the better to enjoy Anders and the light he cast off so thoughtlessly and so artfully in the dark? He had found it thrilling. He wondered if this had been common at the Circle - little, everyday magic, that made the world a brighter place.

No wonder Anders had fought so hard for his people.

Hesitantly, he stretched his hand out flat, and focused. When the veilfire bloomed in his cupped palm he smiled briefly in triumph, and then he let it go - floating up above his head, a pretty blue spark that hovered in amongst all the others. Sometimes it was nice to be reminded of the little things, he thought.

So engrossed was he in the casual beauty of the magelights, that it took him a while to realise the single orange light amongst the lot was not veilfire - just a standard torch coming closer and closer. With a thought - drunk, almost, on Skyhold beer and the confidence of being amongst his own people - he sent his light out to investigate.

"Hawke?" That was Varric. "That you?"

"Nope," Hawke said. "Don't know anyone by that name."

Varric drew closer and looked at him, unimpressed. The torch and the magelight cast deep shadows across his face, and when he buried the torch as hard as he could in the cold earth next to them it changed the angle of the flames enough to make him look downright fierce. "Gotta say, Hawke, it's cold as a noble hunter's heart here. You chose this over a spot on my floor?"

Hawke waggled his fingers, making the magelight shimmy. "I was trying to blend in."

"Not well," said Varric. He shivered, and wrapped his great coat further around him. "Listen, Hawke, great as it is to catch up…"

"... There's some kind of problem?"

"I didn't say that."

Hawke sighed. "You didn't need to. What is it? Problems with the Western Approach? Don't tell me we're on the move already."

Varric's jaw worked. He folded his arms across his chest, and Hawke wasn't sure if it was to cover up the plunging neckline or because he wasn't happy. "You don't know?"

"Know what?" Hawke gestured at his tent. "I've been out here. If there's news, I wasn't eavesdropping."

Varric paused before answering, which wasn't very him. "No," he said, after a while. "No, there's no news. But only because I am working staggeringly hard to keep it that way. I can't do that for much longer, Hawke. Your only saving grace is that Nightingale is locked in her tower working on getting people into Halamshiral. You won't have long until she finds out."

"Right," Hawke said. "I'm beginning to feel like there's a part of this conversation that you had without me?"

Varric sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "About an hour after you left the tavern," he said, "... He turned up."

Hawke's brain temporarily whited out. "You said he was in Nevarra."

"My sources said Carver was in Nevarra, yes," said Varric, tersely. "Your, uh, worse half?" He stepped aside, and behind him more magefire appeared, as blue and bright as Hawke's own - but this wasn't some dainty dancing ball of harmless flames.

"Hello, Hawke," Anders said, his eyes two pools of liquid fire under a shabby black hood.

Fuck.

It took some quick talking for Varric to leave them alone, but Hawke was quick and he was a talker, so altogether he made it work.

"If Starkhaven finds out -"

"They won't," he said.

Varric hadn't looked impressed. "There's a whole pack of templars a stone's throw over here. Some of them came from Kirkwall. Curly came from Kirkwall."

Hawke didn't care. "It'll be fine, Varric." And if it wasn't, well. He'd killed templars. He'd killed Kirkwall templars; he'd killed "Curly's" last commander. It wouldn't be anything new, but he knew if he said that Varric would look at him like he was a stranger, and that gulf between them - that had begun when Anders sent the Chantry up and then out, chunks of debris whistling through the air at lethal velocity - might become an outright chasm, insurmountable and unmendable.

Anders hadn't said anything. He'd watched the argument with eyes that slowly dimmed, until they were his normal warm brown and just as lovely. And that was the crux of the problem, wasn't it? It wasn't just the Chantry, or the templars, or the mages. Those things had always been there, lurking in the undercurrents of their friendship like rocks.

It was that Varric was friends with a version of Hawke who maybe hadn't existed for a long time. A Hawke who would have hesitated to fight his way out of the Inquisition's ranks, even if it came to protecting Anders. A Hawke who would be more worried about killing templars, or the Chantry, or Starkhaven.

He didn't know when that Hawke had died, not really. Maybe he never would. But Varric didn't need to know that. He'd lost enough already.

"If there's a problem, I'll handle it," said Hawke. "And I'll get us out of here if I have to." He flashed his most winning smile. "It's what I do, right?"

Varric's eyes slowly tracked to Anders, who looked away.

"If I need you I'll shout," Hawke added.

"You do that, Hawke," said Varric, slowly. He looked nervously over his shoulder - as though the templars camped on the other side of the army were watching, or could even see anything through the hundreds of magelights. Hawke let his own loop over their heads, and shifted to put himself, ever so slightly, between his best friend and his lover.

"I'll see you for breakfast tomorrow," he said.

"... Shit. Yeah. Okay." Varric wiped his hands on his shirt. "Don't let him blow anything up."

That throne wouldn't be missed, Hawke thought. Or the sunburst banners. But he didn't say it, because sometimes he had more sense than the Maker had given the chickens werking their way around the mage camp. Instead he waved, and stayed there until he'd seen Varric safely away, trudging up the long hill toward Skyhold's curtain walls.

"It's nice to know some things don't much change," said Anders.

"Yes," said Hawke. "They do. Go on, into the tent. He's right - no point provoking the spies."

"Good to see you too," Anders said. He didn't look a shade remorseful, but he also didn't look haunted, or like a man struggling with the echoing call of the archdemon. Hawke eyed him thoughtfully, but gestured at the sad flap of canvas, and Anders went first as he always did.

The tent wasn't big enough for the both of them, not really, but that didn't matter. They made it work. Anders had a way of folding himself so that he took up no space at all, and Hawke had never asked him if it was a Circle thing or a Warden thing or an Anders thing. He tucked the folds of his cloak meticulously around his crossed legs, and shrugged off his gloves in order to set a flame - a real flame, not simulated veilfire - to Hawke's iron lantern, which he hung from the tent pole like he'd known it was there.

Hawke didn't say, What are you doing here? He already knew. He didn't say, Why are you here? That was in the hundreds of magelights outside. He didn't say, You shouldn't be here. People had already spent too many years telling Anders where he should and shouldn't be.

"Catch me up," Hawke said. He put his hand on Anders' knee, and Anders put his palm over the top of it perfectly casually, like he hadn't turned up uninvited at the heart of a religious organisation that had run roughshod over men committing lesser crimes than his.

He'd given Carver the slip somewhere along the Minanter, he said. The Dog had still been with him at that time. They'd been aiming for Nevarra but had had no real plans beyond that, since neither of them were very well-travelled and both of them had stuck out like a sore thumb in the land of the necropoli.

"I wanted you well away from the Inquisition," said Hawke. "Anders, the Inquisitor executed a mage from Redcliffe for some crime she said he'd committed in the future."

"She also invited Fiona and her people into her army," said Anders. "I took a chance on that. I had to."

Hawke set his jaw. "Varric's not wrong about the templars, either."

"So I shouldn't have come? I should have toddled around Nevarra like a child, while the greatest shakeup of the Circles in our lifetime happened here?" Anders' eyes were still brown under the lantern light. It paid to check. He said they were one and the same, and Hawke tried to believe that, since spirits reacted to belief - but Justice responded to logic, and Anders didn't, not always.

"I came for you," Anders said. "Everything you've just said to me about the Inquisition… that applies to you, too. You told me we'd be fugitives together, and we have been, love, but I know that hasn't exactly left you beloved."

"It was one pack of assassins," Hawke said. Honestly. "They weren't even Crows."

Anders looked at him like he was the idiot walking into the mouth of a religious organization formed expressly to put an end to the war he had risked everything to start. "They stabbed you in the kidney," he said.

"I've got two," Hawke argued, and when Anders opened his mouth - to argue or to dress him down, like, again, he was the idiot who had walked into the mouth of a religious organization formed expressly to (etc etc), he held his hand up. "Loghain said the wardens were hearing the Calling. Were… Are you? Was Carver?"

Anders was silent a second too long. Bloody idiot. Bloody self-sacrificing idiot. Hawke pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's ignorable," said Anders. "It's… I don't know. It's like… someone singing something in the gutter outside your house, when the Blooming Rose turfed out its customers, remember? After the third watch bell? And it's muffled but it sounds like a song that you used to know, a long time ago, in a language you used to speak." He looked away. "It's really catchy, too. But you can't remember the words."

"Is it like the Deep Roads?" Hawke remembered Anders telling him once that red lyrium sounded like something similar. He'd even sung a few bars of it for him once, alone in their bedroom, his voice reedy and trailing off, embarrassed into silence by the quiet air.

There were so many things about Anders that Hawke wasn't a part of - the Warden business, or the way that Justice could handle things and know their history, feel the echoes of cruelties unanswered from ages past in things as simple as objects. Part of him would always regret that. The rest of him couldn't fathom what that would be like, to have killed and to feel the ghosts of your victims in the spirit wound tight to the very fabric of your being.

"It's fine, Hawke." Anders' eyes were fierce. "I can live with it."

He shouldn't have to. "Loghain said all the Wardens in Orlais were hearing it," Hawke said. "He thought… he said it might be Corypheus."

Anders didn't even have the grace to look surprised. "And if it isn't? Do you think I will just collapse?"

Maker, Hawke had forgotten how much he loved him - how bloody stubborn he could be. At times it was a marvel. At other times it made him want to tear his own hair out. Anders had always been like that - at least since the day Hawke had met him, standing in the midst of a scruffy squalid little clinic in the heart of Kirkwall's sewers, bristling like the shabby feathers sewn to his threadbare pauldrons were a cat's hackles. Now that he looked at him - really looked at him - he could see the tension in Anders' shoulders, the same drive to fight (to defend).

Hawke wanted to protect the people he loved. Anders had told him that he understood, that he knew why Hawke had packed him off with Carver - but Anders had spent the majority of his life refusing to do what he was told, and fighting for the right for others to do so too, if they pleased. That had, after all, been what drew him to Anders that night in the clinic - the fury in his eyes, the defiance as wild and untameable as a lightning strike.

You chose this, he told himself. For better or for worse.

"No," he said. "No, I know you can handle yourself."

Anders looked pleased at the admission; it made his eyes sparkle, alight with the flames from the lamp, and Hawke couldn't keep from smiling back. They had come so far since the early days. His hand was still on Anders' knee; he turned it over to twine their fingers, and Anders let him with a soft look Hawke knew so well.

"I've -"

"You know -"

They both paused, grinning. Hawke gestured for Anders to go first, and Anders lifted their clasped hands from his lap, gave his gloved knuckles a small, gentle kiss that made his spine stiffen, surprise and a sudden spark of heat. It had been a while. Anders reached up and caught the hem of his glove, and began to pull it upward and off; Hawke let him, and licked his lips when his hand was free and Anders turned it over, palm-up like a Rivaini seer, telling the future from his heartline - if Rivaini seers did so by dipping their heads and pressing a small, unbelievably delicate kiss to the centre of Hawke's palm. His hands were so warm. Justice's work, he'd said once, as they lay in bed one sunny afternoon and mapped each other's bodies in the way of new lovers.

Nothing about this felt new. It felt better. Hawke's fingers twitched; Anders' breath was hot and damp against his palm and he flicked his eyes up, copper and bright as the fires they'd left in their wake. "I've missed you, love," he said. His voice was low, velvet. "I couldn't stay away."

He was still wearing the damn cloak with its too-big hood and Hawke couldn't resist pushing it off his face, freeing his hair, his pale skin, his ears with their tiny piercing scars. He rubbed his thumb back and forth against one, following the curve back and forth along the lobe because Anders liked it when he did, and smiled when Anders' eyes half-lidded, content as a cat. "I know," he said.

"I love you," said Anders, quietly.

The tent was too damn small. It had been too damn long. Hawke wanted to lay him out, naked and free as any soul twined with a spirit could ever be - to trace the long, lean lines of his body with the pads of his fingers and the flat of his tongue. He wanted to taste the sweat in the dip of Anders' throat; feel the way his belly quivered when he nipped at it. He wanted to shove his face between Anders' thighs, because his beard was untamed and Anders always liked the scratchiness against his most sensitive places. He wanted to fit his mouth over Anders' nipples, tease them stiff and hard; put his hand around Anders' throat and let Anders butt into it, challenging him silently to squeeze. All these things he would have done, if they had had the room.

Instead he surged up on his knees and caught Anders' face between his palms - pulled him in close for a kiss that was as hungry as it was devouring. Anders rocked into him - gasped, into the small spaces between their mouths, and his hands flew to where they belonged; one on Hawke's hip, the other on his thigh, long fingers spread wide as his mouth opened up for Hawke so nice and fucking easy.

(Their first night in Kirkwall - Anders lying atop him, kissing him so sweetly; Hawke, arms circled around his shoulders, afraid of clutching too tightly and of letting him go in equal measure. What do you like? In bed, I mean.

You, Anders had murmured into the skin of his throat, right up against the pulse of his jugular, and he could feel his heartbeat in the push and pull of Anders' lips and had known, even then, that he would never give this up.)

Because at the end of it all - all the things he'd shared with Kirkwall, the title, the money, the estate - the friends, the patrons in the Hanged Man who'd known his name, the banquet invitations and the parties and the toasts and cheers and nods in the street, the Hawkes and Champions and that chair Varric reserved for him every Tuesday for Wicked Grace - none of this came close to Anders.

His love was and always had been a desperate, greedy love. It was forged, red-knuckled and sharp-toothed, in a boyhood of hiding from the village knights; of shopkeepers with branded foreheads; of Bethany crying in a pew in the Lothering Chantry, achingly alone; of Father dying, drowning in his own blood in the bed he'd shared with Mother because he was too afraid to teach either of them healing magic, lest they reveal themselves with an act of kindness.

Anders' cloak went somewhere to their left; his own followed not long after. They were wearing too much but there just wasn't enough room to strip and so they took turns, one after the other, fitting around each other without even trying. Anders shirtless was a thing of glory - too skinny, of course, because he always was; the man ate rat stew in the dankest part of Darktown for three years and still gave half if it away every damn day to the refugees, and Hawke set his teeth to the slope of his collarbones and bit down hard enough to bruise for the way it made Ander's breath hitch, shockingly loud in the still air.

He'd never been a vocal lover. Circle mages learn very quickly not to be, he'd said once. Hawke had thought at the start that he'd done something wrong, but Anders wasn't shy about showing his appreciation in other ways. His hands were everywhere - desperately roaming Hawke's back, hips, arse, chin; he pushed his thumbs under Hawke's cheekbones and pulled him in for a kiss only slightly interrupted by the way he shivered as Hawke found a nipple, pinched it the way he knew Anders enjoyed.

There was a whole language in the way Anders' body reacted to Hawke - vocabulary forged of the most minute twist of his eyebrows, the way he bit at his lower lip as Hawke traced the scar on his chest with the very edge of his thumbnail. It was his favourite of Anders' scars, and there were many. A sword to the chest, he'd said, and he'd survived, and every day it was a reminder to Hawke to be grateful.

Anders' fingers bunched into the meat of his forearms like claws when Hawke dipped his head to tongue his way along the length and breadth of it. His fingernails were digging in hard enough that Hawke knew they'd leave marks, ten perfect crescents that wouldn't last long enough, not by half. There was a low, slow-burning heat in his belly, like a fire raging without limit. Like a city burning on some distant horizon.

Anders was still clothed below the waist - ugly black pants held up by string, but he shimmied his hips just so when Hawke tugged on that makeshift belt, understanding without asking what Hawke wanted. No smallclothes, either, of course. Hawke couldn't maneuver him to get his boots off, much less everything below the waist, so he shoved it all down as far as he could and pressed a thumb to the underside of Anders' cock, right up against the case; the vein there skipped a rhythm that mingled with his pulse in the pad of his thumb. He looked up at Anders - sprawled on his back, shirt tangled around his elbows, pants around his knees - and had to shudder to the stop at the way Anders was looking at him.

Intense. Predatory. He bit his lip - slowly, so that Hawke saw him do it, watched the way it purpled under the pressure of his teeth - and rocked his hips in one smooth, low circle, sinuous and languid. The light from the lamp sent shadowed tongues along his sharp collarbones, skating along the staircase of his ribs, caressing the raised arches of his hip bones. His cock was fat and flush, lying on one thigh - inviting.

(I like, he'd said, the morning after that first night, To be touched.

That's all? They'd gone ten rounds, it felt like. Hawke hadn't entirely been sure he had any bones left of which to speak anywhere in any of his limbs. Anders had been sprawled out next to him, tracing circles around his navel with his long, clever fingers, eyes half-lidded and warm.

In the Circle - he'd paused, his jaw working, and then, I'm sorry. I don't want to bring the cause into your home -

He'd caught Anders' hand, stilling that idle movement. It's your home, too. And it's my cause, he'd said, and knew even as he pressed a kiss to Anders' blue-scarred knuckles it was the right thing to say, and the truest.)

Now he gently nudged Anders' thighs apart with his hands, and stroked the soft skin on the inside with his thumbs. He was so shockingly pale, here where the sun never shone; Anders watched him with so much trust it took his breath away. The things life had done to this man; the people who wanted, to this day, to do more. Anders had known - had willingly taken that on; hunted, hated. It was sobering to know that in all of Thedas there was only one person left Anders could rely on - could trust, here, in his most intimate moments.

It was hard to move in the cramped confines of the tent - they were neither of them short men, and any of one of them would have been enough for it - but when Anders rested his head back on Hawke's pack, staring up wordlessly at the canvas ceiling - throat working, chest rising and falling shakily - when Hawke cupped his cock in one hand that felt too rough, too calloused for something so precious - he gasped, and it feels like victory.

He smelled like sweat and a long march. He was burning hot. His back was arched, his thighs splayed; Hawke could see the tension in the dip of Anders' stomach, the way his breath caught just so slightly on every inhale. And when he lowered his head, wrapped his lips around the head, he tasted like salt and something else - like lightning, like lyrium, like something sharp and briny and Anders.

Warden stamina meant they'd get another round - or three - before Satina dipped fully below the horizon, and even so, Hawke took his time. It'd been weeks and this - every shift of Anders' body, every turn of his head, every clench of his fist - was something to be treasured, not unlike Anders' arousal itself, desperate and yearning; he traced the thick vein hidden underneath, teased the slit atop the crown, even sucked kisses to the sensitive sac underneath for the way it made Anders exhale, shudderingly and the closest he ever came to losing control of himself between the sheets.

It was all worth it. Weeks of waiting. He drew Anders into his mouth - fully, cheeks hollowed and Anders slotted in like he belonged there - in Hawke's mouth and in his shitty cramped tent and his well-worn bedroll and his heart, all of them one and the same - and sucked like he knew Anders liked it, hard and gentle, alternating, hands ever-busy tracing Anders' hips and thighs and the dip of his belly button - and when Anders came, filling his mouth and spelling down his chin he swallowed as much as he could, because he could, because he wanted to, because Anders had set a Chantry ablaze for his right to choose to.

"Fuck," said Anders. He sounded winded. Hawke ran the pad of his thumb under his mouth to catch some of the spill and licked it clean fastidiously, which just made Anders groan softly under his breath.

"How was that?" His voice sounded hoarse, and smug even to his own ears.

"You bloody know how that was," Anders said. He nudged Hawke gently with one knee, and rolled onto his side; his cock was shiny and soft and Hawke thought they probably had about thirty minutes before it was good to go again. "Do you want the same back…?"

He shook his head, and Anders wriggled closer, ungainly on the cool ground; his hand slid gently to cup Hawke's hip like it belonged there. Maybe it did. "I just want you," said Hawke.

Anders kissed the side of his nose. His eyes were warm, but the corners of his mouth were a little melancholy. Hawke could recognise it in the way his fingers played with the buckle of Hawke's belt, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. The tent smelled of them. "You've got me, love," he said, gentle.

His ribs were even more prominent like this, lying on his hip. Hawke ran his fingers along them like the strings of the lute they'd had, back at the estate - one at a time, the barest graze of his fingertips for the way Anders' breath froze in his chest at the touch, the way he arched his spine - more responsive than the lute had ever been, and the sounds he made were all the sweeter.

He pushed, ever so gently, rolling Anders back as he'd been; and when he climbed atop his lover, pressing his cock heavy against Anders' hip, the grin they shared was near identical. "Show me," said Hawke, drowning in the light reflected in Anders' eyes; a second later he felt Anders' palm cup the back of his neck, feather-light and so damn hot, and felt the Fade shivered around them so gently, as Anders drew on it with a touch only another mage could appreciate.

Perhaps it was the spirit-healer in him that gave Anders such a deft touch. Perhaps it was the spirit. Either way, the surge of electricity that passed through him left him no room to comment, and neither did the way Anders swallowed his gasp straight from his mouth.

Thirty minutes could not come soon enough.

Afterwards they lay for a while, dozing. The tent was too small to allow them personal space, but Hawke didn't think he'd look for it even if he had. His head rested against Anders' shoulder; he could feel the hot air of his lover's exhalations against the crown of his head. They wore Anders' shitty stained travel cloak as a blanket, and breathed in and out nearly in sync.

He ached, but it was a good ache. Nothing like the soreness from the hike to Crestwood or back. Anders had offered to heal it, but Hawke had waved him away; he wanted to keep them, the bite marks, the imprints of Anders' nails, the bruising on his wrists where Anders had pinned his hands above his head and ridden him like a grand tourney jouster, hips rocking smooth and rhythmic while Hawke caressed his thighs and nipples and throat with hands that always wanted more of him than they could hold.

He wasn't sleeping. Neither was Hawke. Even at this late - or early - hour, people were active in the encampment; horses whinnied, mages gossiped outside, ravens croaked. Hawke ran his thumb over Anders' hip, back and forth, back and forth like a good luck charm. Anders' chest rose and fell. It should have been peaceful. Instead Hawke could feel something like an old fear in his gut, and he knew Anders shared it too.

It felt like it had the night before the Chantry. The city had been falling apart; Anders had been distant for weeks. Hawke had walked in on him earlier that day trying to give Varric his pillow - one of the very, very few items he had ever stored in the drawer Hawke had set aside from him. They'd made love that night, the curtains drawn and Anders aflame in blue, casting jagged shadows throughout the room; he had made Hawke's bedsheets look inky black. Hawke had kissed him like Anders was drowning, and Hawke could breathe for the pair of them if Anders just never let go.

He didn't remember falling asleep, but he'd awoken alone, to a pristine bedroom - no dirty socks aimed somewhere near the laundry basket. No lute forgotten on the side table. No hair ribbons scattered over the night table. He remembered that heartbreak, that fear, and he thought he always would.

"Copper for your thoughts, love?" Anders' voice is sleepy, and scratchy-soft.

"You can have them for free," Hawke said. He paused. "You can have them all for free. Fair warning."

Anders rocked them closer for a half a heartbeat to press a kiss to his cheek. "I'll take that offer, and be all the richer for it," he says, but he sounded wistful. He knew, just as Hawke did.

Better to pull the viper out than allow it to seep poison unchecked. Hawke untangled himself from Anders' arms, pushing himself upright on one elbow, and looked at him - at the tension at the edges of his eyes, the tightness around the corners of his mouth. "You know what I'm going to say."

"I'm not coming with you to the Western Approach," Anders said. "Even though it's Warden business, because you think it's too much of a risk to me to be near Corypheus." Irritation flashes through his features. "What happened last time was not a guarantee to happen again. I wasn't prepared -"

"I know," Hawke interrupted, gently. "Anders. I know. I trust you. But I don't trust this Inquisition. I don't trust them to let you slip out of their grasp, even if we make it back from the Approach. You told me once that it would… it would kill you, to lose me."

"Yes." Anders' eyes were shiny. The lantern light did him no favours there, for all the conviction in his voice. "Yes, it would."

Hawke's chest ached. He reached up to cup his lover's face, slowly, so gently - like back when they were still courting, when Anders was as impossible to resist as a vortex spell but just as inexorable, when Anders held himself tense and aloof and said things like what if your money and connections aren't enough to keep you safe?

As if there had been any chance of safety, for him, for Anders, for any mage. Anders had been a Grey Warden. They'd never let him go even then.

Anders' lips were kiss-bitten. He hadn't healed his own marks away, either - letting them linger, like badges, like the jewellery he had once loved. Hawke touched the pad of his thumb to Anders' chin and drew him close, so that they were nearly touching foreheads; Anders' breath was hot on his face.

"I can't lose you," he said. "And neither can they."

"‘They'?"

In answer he kissed Anders sweetly and carefully, because he could, because someone should, and then called the veilfire back to his hand. It came, quick and steady, so bright he could see it through his closed eyelids; Anders shivered, licked his lips. "You told me once that I was the most important thing in your life, but that some things mattered more to you than your life. Has that changed?"

A jagged, hoarse inhale. "Don't, Hawke."

"Has that changed?"

Anders looked like he had been stabbed in the heart again, like that marvellous, life-defining scar had opened up, for good this time. He jerked away from Hawke, eyes screwed shut, and took in a rasping, chest-rattling breath so deep and so wretched Hawke could feel it sucking at the base of his own lungs. "Damn you. Damn you, don't -" His knuckles were catching with blue fire. Hawke watched, dispassionate, as it spread up his long arms, rippled across those beautiful collar bones, flashed up over his face like a lightning storm. His eyes caught last, burning brighter than even Hawke's summoned veilfire. "No," Anders said, and his voice was a duet. "No, that has not changed."

"You cannot come with me to the Western Approach," Hawke said. "Anders, they will catch you." And they will kill you, he did not say, And then I will die killing them.

The rifts, Corypheus - none of that mattered. Hawke knew that. Anders had to know that.

The blue faded from his lover's skin. He looked wretched - diminished, thinner, shabbier. "I came here to be with you," he said, so softly it was barely a whisper.

"I know." Hawke stooped and bumped their foreheads together again, but Anders moved at the last second, and their cheeks brushed with an ungainly rasp of beard and stubble.

"I suppose you expect me to return to Nevarra?" His voice was bitter. "Hide among the Necropoli and await your raven?"

Hawke shook his head. "If… something goes wrong, with the Wardens… Weisshaupt needs to know."

Anders was silent for a long time. "The Anderfels is on the other bloody end of the map," he said. "I'd be travelling for months. And they might not let me go, either."

He smiled despite himself at that. "The Circle couldn't keep you," he said. "The Ferelden Grey Wardens couldn't keep you. Anders, my love… nobody can keep you if you don't want to be kept."

Anders swallowed. "There's at least one person I wish would," he said. "If you don't return…"

"There will still be mages," said Hawke. "There will still be people who need help. I can't pretend to know how much it will hurt, but Anders - it would hurt me as much to lose you. And what would you say, if our positions were reversed? What did you say?"

His jaw was set, but Hawke knew it was the right thing to say. "That I'd never forget you," he said. "That there would never be anyone like you. That I needed you to know that I loved you." He breathed out, and let loose a long plume of ice vapour, like a dragon; it shrank the lantern flames, and left droplets of moisture on Hawke's bare shoulder. Anders turned to look at him, and his eyes were soft, and sad, but knowing. "I do love you, you know. Forever. And I need you to promise me that you'll do your best to come back."

"Always," said Hawke, and Anders searched his face like he was looking for any sign of reluctance - but there was none.

"When you come back -"

"No." He kissed Anders again, softly. "We'll talk about it after."

There were beads of water at the edges of Anders' eyes, and Hawke didn't think they were from the ice vapour; he reached up and wiped them away carefully with the pad of his thumbs, and Anders let him. "I never thought I'd hate being on the other side so much."

Hawke didn't say sorry. He didn't think he could. "It's a long way to Weisshaupt," he said.

Anders traced careful fingertips along his flank, smoothing away the sting of an earlier bite. There was no magic at his fingertips, not this time; just the warmth he always carried in him, and a desperation to touch. "Don't worry. I'll be gone before the sun rises," he said, and Hawke sucked in a breath as his fingers slid somewhere sensitive. "In the meantime…"

"Warden stamina?"

"A parting memento," he agreed, unsmiling and so beautiful in his concentration. Hawke kissed him on the forehead and thought, if this is the last we see of each other -

He'd tear Corypheus apart. He'd tear the Inquisition apart. But he wouldn't tear Anders apart.

"Whatever you like," he said.

Anders smiled - thin, weak, but real enough. "Hawke," he said. "Don't you remember? What I like hasn't changed. It's you. And no matter what, it always will be."

"I love you," said Hawke, because Anders had gone too long without saying it, and if this was to be the end -

"I know." Anders' eyes were reverent. "I know, love. Now hush. We haven't long before dawn… and I still have some tricks to teach you."

More than one, it turned out.

They rode out at noon the next day. The Inquisitor led the column, riding between an elven mage Hawke didn't know - bald, sober, who handled his halla with a cautious hand - and Cullen. Loghain rode several paces behind them, face like thunder; the Ben Hassrath agent was at his side, chatting away about military tactics. There were others - other members of the so-called Inner Circle - but Hawke didn't know them, and didn't much care to.

Varric rode at his left, aboard a shaggy little pony that kept trying to sidle up to Hawke's horse and kick the shit out of it. Between trying to avoid the little bastard's attacks and trying to keep himself awake in the saddle, it took longer than it should for Hawke to realise they had fallen slightly back from the main column, and then it was too late.

"So," said Varric, conversationally. "No sign of - him this morning?"

He'd woken after a scant few hours of rest to an empty bedroll. His thighs ached. His legs ached. Under his sweaty travelling clothes, the kisses Anders had pressed into his skin, marking him with teeth and desperation in something almost like rune-work, definitely ached. But his heart didn't. It wasn't like Kirkwall; then Anders had left him and Hawke had felt left behind, an unwilling viewer in the life of the man he loved.

With every kiss, Anders had left him with an oath: come home to me. I'll be waiting. And Hawke meant to. "He's gone somewhere safer," said Hawke, sensing Varric's steady gaze on him. "I'll join him, when I can."

"Right," Varric said. He didn't sound much at ease. "He's not going to cause trouble, is he?"

Hawke had to think about it. "Probably not," he said. "Unless someone tries to cause it for him, first. Then it'll be something to behold."

Varric opened his mouth and closed it again, and then said, "You really trust him, don't you?"

And that was easy. The answer was in all seven years of their relationship; it was in the veilfire, in the mages, in the pieces of the Chantry scattered throughout Kirkwall. It was in Meredith Stannard, dead by Hawke's hand; in Bethany Hawke, lost before her time; in his father's death bed and in the bedroll last night, in warm hands and blood spilled and kisses pressed to places they belonged, and eyes that burned like stars in the night. It was in Varric's unhappy shoulders and the bite marks pressed against Hawke's throat like a secret, and in the slope of Anders' shoulders as he'd sat on that crate and awaited judgement.

It was in Hawke, and in a solitary traveller, headed north with nobody left in the world but his own unquenchable strength. A man who had built himself up from nothing and who was, in his own, inexhaustible way, the strongest Hawke had ever met. Who loved so hard and so keenly it took Hawke's breath away, and who devoted himself so strongly to the rights of boys like Hawke had been to choose for themselves whether to live or to die for causes they believed in.

What else could he say?

"Yes," he said. "I do. I really do, Varric. With more fire than the sun."

And before Varric could say anything he set his heels to the horse, and let it speed up to carry him onward, to the Western Approach.

And perhaps one day, back to Anders.