AN: This kind of ran away with me. I used my F!Rogue Hawke for this one (I've also played through as a mage and as a warrior-obsession's a bitch). Bioware owns all characters named herein.

Night always seemed to come too early in Lowtown. The retreating sun threw the slums and alleys into unforgiving and oppressive shadows. Shopkeepers trudged home after inevitably not selling enough of their wares, or else stubbornly stayed open in hopes of attracting just one more customer. Thugs, gangs and whores shuffled out of the proverbial woodwork to strut up and down the dirt-packed streets. Even the most determined vendors closed their stalls and scuttled home under the hard stares of Carta and Coterie alike. The smoke from the Foundry District cast strange, billowing shapes across the twilight sky and filled the air with a dirty, acrid tang reminiscent of blood. And as night deepened, eventually all the roads of the drunk, desperate, or just plain dumb led to the Hanged Man.

Lily Hawke slipped out of her uncle's shack into the Lowtown dark just as the moon began its nightly ascent. Her mother Leandra had long since retired, though Lily could hear her soft sobs seeping through the cracks in the door. Uncle Gamlen had likewise gone to bed—his snores shook the thin walls of his hovel until Lily's teeth rattled. In the six weeks since her return from the Deep Roads expedition, she'd been spending fewer and fewer nights at home, preferring to stay with Varric at his suite in the Hanged Man. Anything was better than slowly going mad under the weight of Leandra's sadness and her own guilt. And tonight—

Tonight was supposed to be about getting roaring drunk and trying to forget, Lily reminded herself sternly.

But the raucous noise inside the tavern only served to accentuate the bone-deep, raw and painful swirl of EVERYTHING that threatened to claw out of her skin if she stood still for too long. For the first time in her life, Lily fled, and only hoped no one had seen her hovering in the doorway.

She barely resisted the urge to run full-tilt through Lowtown—even half-crazed with EVERYTHING she had no desire to attract undue attention. So she settled for a brisk walk—a pace that came nowhere near to satisfying her desperate need to be AWAY but would have to do. But Andraste's pyre, she was so sick of settling for CAREFUL—she'd BEEN careful, and now—

Now she was firing an arrow into a huddle of Carta thugs, laughing and screaming as it exploded and scattered. She drew a second arrow as the thugs advanced, and knew a small relief as she felt some of the maddening EVERYTHING subside.

Aveline heard the distant sounds of the brawl from her patrol route. She might not have taken further note of it, except that she recognized Hawke's voice screaming epithets and curses. There was a ragged edge to her manic laughter that made the hair on the back of Aveline's neck stand to attention. The guard didn't have to think twice. She drew her sword and followed the noise. Maker knew that if she didn't Hawke was going to get herself killed.

Lily sent her arrows into the Carta with deadly precision, feeling better every time one hit home. She didn't notice the Carta reinforcements dropping from the crooked eaves behind her, not until one of them jammed a fist into the small of her back and sent her sprawling. The dwarven thugs rushed forward eagerly, sensing victory. Lily was almost happy to give it to them—anything was better than—

A blur of steel-and-copper armor rushed across her vision and suddenly her attackers were significantly fewer in number, and a familiar voice was commanding her to get up. Lily threw her remaining dagger into her last assailant and jumped nimbly to her feet to face her rescuer.

Aveline glared at her as she jerked her sword from a Carta's chest. "What in the name of the Maker were you thinking?" she demanded angrily as the thugs writhed in their death throes.

Lily felt curiously blank and empty. "Fancied a walk," she answered mildly, as though deaf to Aveline's anger. "Thanks for the help—sorry if I interrupted anything."

She might have been commenting on a Chantry fete for all the inflection in her voice. Aveline grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly. "Hawke!" she shouted, urgently searching the younger woman's face. "You're not hurt are you? What is going on?" she demanded.

Hawke's face hardened at her touch. "Let go of me, Aveline," she commanded stonily, trying to twist of her grasp.

"Hawke, this isn't like you," Aveline insisted, tightening her grip. "Now tell me what's wrong or else you can sleep it off in a cell."

"I'm fine." Hawke's struggling was becoming more pronounced. "Now let. Me. Go."

Far from satisfied but less interested in causing a scene, Aveline complied, turning her attention to the still and cooling bodies. Low-level toughs, if their armor was anything to go by. Still dangerous in numbers, though.

Lily was already rifling through pockets and tidily piling the corpses. The proceeds from the Deep Roads expedition were already lining her coffers, but old habits died hard. And touching anything from that place felt like—

Realization dawned, and Aveline could only curse herself for not making the connection sooner. She gently curled a hand around Lily's elbow and pulled her away from the bodies. "I'm sorry about Bethany, Hawke," she said simply.

Lily's eyes glazed briefly and she looked as though she might actually accept whatever meager comfort Aveline could offer. But she couldn't. She slipped out of Aveline's grasp, and was gone.

Part of her had wanted nothing more than to let Aveline guide her back to the Hanged Man to share a drink with Anders and Varric, and watch Isabela proposition every man within earshot. But the hurt was catching up with her again, an no matter how hard she tried, Lily couldn't outrun it forever. Her steps dragged through the packed dirt, barely registering the transition to even cobbled streets that lined the richer districts of Kirkwall until she looked up.

Hightown really was beautiful at night, she reflected distantly as she drifted aimlessly from shadow to shadow. The moonlight bounced off the neatly-paved roads; a light breeze carried an array of heady perfumes from nobles' gardens of night-blooming flowers. And everything was so clean and quiet—at least compared to Lowtown.

A jolt of recognition hit Lily like lightning as she realized she was standing in front of the old Amell estate. Something hitched painfully inside her as she remembered her first week in Kirkwall, trying to make her family's new life seem less desperate and dire.

She had the locked door open before she'd consciously decided to go inside. The slavers had let the main floor go to ruin, preferring to remain in the cellar levels. But ghosts of the old Amell grandeur remained—hits of crystal glittered in the chandelier hanging above the blackened fireplace; the quality of the architecture was apparent even under the years of grime and dust.

Lily choked on a shuddering sob as she ran a hand over the ruined furniture, as she finally allowed herself to think of grief, of sorrow, and of—

"Hawke?"

Lily whirled, an arrow fitted to her bowstring. She lowered it when she recognized the glint of Aveline's guard insignia in the moonlight. "How did you get in here?" she asked thickly, scrubbing the tears off her face.

Aveline almost smiled. "You left the door open," she replied. "Where are we?"

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"Not on your life."

An odd gratitude rushed through Lily, and she suddenly felt as though she could finally share a little bit of the tangled snarl of thoughts chasing around in her head. "It's my mother's childhood estate," she finally answered Aveline's question. "Bethany and I—we broke in during our first week in Kirkwall, to find our grandfather's will. Come to find out, he'd left her this old place, not Gamlen." Sadness warred with hope in her expression, and Aveline felt an echo of her own grief looking at it. "I thought I might buy it for Mother," Lily continued, almost bashfully. "Give her a real home."

Aveline couldn't speak past the lump in her throat. They may be on opposite sides of the law now, but the flight from Lothering had forged a friendship stronger than any mad or petty law this city could devise. "Bethany would be proud of you," she finally said.

Tears spilled over Lily's eyelashes as she turned to the mangle. She pulled something out of each pocket—Aveline recognized a scrap of brightly-colored cloth—and put them on the mantle. "I promised her I'd take care of Mother," Lily said shakily. "This is the only way I know how."

Aveline laid a hand on her shoulder. The younger woman shuddered once, and finally the dam broke, and she was sobbing softly into Aveline's armored shoulder. The ruined room was silent except for the muted sounds of loss. Even these gradually subsided, and Lily pushed herself gently off Aveline's chest plate to turn back to the tokens on the mantle. Up close, Aveline recognized the hilt of Carver's broken sword, and the fluttering scrap of the scarf Bethany had worn into the Deep Roads. Her last moments with Wesley sprang unbidden from her memory, and she felt as though she were speaking from another place.

It took Lily a moment to realize the prayer Aveline whispered was the same one her husband had spoken over Carver. She lightly brushed her fingers over the makeshift monuments. "Happy birthday, brats," she whispered. And finally—finally—she was able to release some of the awful mess she'd been carrying around inside her since walking out of the Deep Roads without her baby sister. The freezing blankness she felt in her expression melted slightly as Aveline finished her prayer, and Lily could almost smile again. She decided swearing just to make Aveline laugh would have to do for the moment.

"Andraste's holy fucking lemon meringue, I could use a drink."