"Honestly, Anders, I'll be fine," Hawke held his mangled hands out in front of him, slowly dripping blood onto the sand.

Anders glared at him, lines of annoyance etched into his haggard face. Hawke grinned sheepishly, and spread his fingers in a placating manner.

"Stop moving your hands, Hawke," Anders fussed, holding his wrists steady. "I thought you were smarter than this. Not sure why exactly, considering you've given me every reason to doubt you actually have a brain up there," he tapped a knuckle against Hawke's forehead, "are you sure it isn't just a lump of rock? You're stubborn enough for it."

"It was the siren call of treasure; I'm weak."

"The siren call of sticking your fingers in a trap more like." Anders grumbled. "I can't regrow a missing finger, you know."

"Ahh, I'm going to get enough of this once Bethany finds out. You can't just spare me for five minutes?"

Anders looked levelly at him. "No."

Hawke snorted. "Spoilsport."

"Yes, well, that is my hobby, alongside sedition and losing money to Isabela. There, you're done."

Hawke flexed his fingers experimentally. "That's amazing, Anders. You got rid of stiffness I didn't know I had."

"Oh?" Anders raised an eyebrow. "Was that supposed to be dirty?"

"A lifetime of cracking my knuckles, I swear. I mean it, Anders," Hawke clapped a hand onto his shoulder, "thank you. You didn't need to come along."

Anders coughed slightly, and replied with an easy smile. "Well, lobbing fireballs at the bandit of the week is my other hobby. Really, you're helping me."

"Good man. Oh, Fenris," Hawke caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye and waved the elf over, "found anything?"

Anders' smile vanished. "Did you have to bring him?" He muttered, scowling.

"He wanted to come." Hawke waved off Anders' irritation. "Besides, isn't it good you're talking? Starting dialogue and all that?"

"Hawke," Fenris greeted, then sneered at Anders, "and abomination."

Anders made a rude gesture at Fenris and rolled his eyes at Hawke, then stomped off to help Bethany move bodies, and tie up the survivors.

"Fenris…"

"I don't like him, Hawke." Fenris snapped, then gritted his teeth and visibly forced his temper down. "A few trinkets and a note. Not the amulet."

"All this trouble over some jewelry," Hawke shook his head. "What did the note say?"

Fenris shoved the crumpled paper into his hand. Hawke shook his head and unfolded it.

"You know," he said, scanning it, "it never ceases to baffle me how many thugs in this city are literate. I used to make a good portion of my spare coin writing and reading letters. Couldn't survive on that here. It says they took everything to the docks. The amulet's probably already been shipped to Highever. Damn. Ah, what a waste of time."

"You don't want to check the docks?"

"We'll pass them heading back into Kirkwall, but chances are they've already launched. Bethany, Anders!" Hawke shouted.

"Coming!" Bethany crested the hill. "Anders got stuck on a particularly nasty broken arm. He's just behind me. It's pretty awful, I—" she squinted at him, "what happened to your hand?"

Hawke's eyes unconsciously flickered to the still blood soaked chest. The trap was quite clearly sprung, and there was a suspiciously familiar chunk of leather pinned in the mechanism. It very obviously matched the equally suspicious missing half of Hawke's glove.

"Hawke, you—"

"Now, Bethany—"

"Oh, look," Fenris said, pointing to the hill, "the abomination's returned."

Bethany redirected her glare from Hawke to Fenris, before stomping her foot. "I'm telling mother when we get back to Kirkwall."

She shouldered past Anders and started a fast march back down Sundermount. Hawke grimaced.

"Afraid of your mother, Hawke?" Anders raised an eyebrow. "And she's such a sweet lady, too."

"Trust me, it's all an act. The second you're out of sight she turns into a high dragon. It's terribly awkward to keep having to replace the roof."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Anders shook his head, "Bethany! Can you believe what Hawke is saying about your mother?"

"Did he call her a high dragon?" Bethany shouted back. She was a good thirty feet in front of them, but her voice carried easily up the rocky path.

"Ah, yes!" Anders shot Hawke a confused look.

"He's right! It's really annoying to fix the roof!"

"See?"

"I will never understand siblings." Anders rubbed his forehead.

Fenris spoke up. "I've noticed your sister calls you Hawke."

"Hm?" Hawke twisted around to look at Fenris. He was lagging behind them, just slightly, due to a bound cut along the top of his thigh that he refused to let Anders touch. To be honest, it was probably a good thing, because Hawke had the sinking suspicion that Anders would have refused to heal it. That was something he needed to address, sooner rather than later; he just had no idea how to do it. "Yes, she does. My mother does, too. Why?"

"I just thought it odd. They are Hawkes as well, are they not? Why not use your given name?"

"It's a bit of a silly story. Ah, we were near Ostagar, in this little farming village. Oh, I must have been about ten, so Bethany and Carver were still babies. Anyways, there was another Garrett who lived there."

"That's a little strange. Isn't Garrett a Marcher name?" Anders said.

Hawke nodded. "It is. I never really asked him about it; he was a horrible little snot. I hated that brat. We got into so many fights, and it was never clear who was being yelled at. I became 'that Hawke boy', and eventually, just 'Hawke'."

"Why did the other Garrett keep his name?" Fenris hobbled faster for a few steps to keep pace with them.

"Well, his surname was 'Cheeseman', which, any way you look at it, is a cruel thing to do to a child."

Anders burst out laughing, and even Fenris seemed affected by the good humor, allowing his impassive face to crack into a hesitant smile.

"Cheeseman? Are you serious?" Anders wheezed, then swallowed his laughter, "I think you're having us, Hawke."

"Having you? Trying to invite yourself over for dinner now, are you Anders?" Hawke smiled wryly. "If you want to see my mother turn into a dragon that badly, you could just curse in front of her. And yes, I'm entirely serious. His grandfather made cheeses. His father lived off the cheese empire."

"And I suppose little Garrett Cheeseman was heir to the cheese throne. Can't imagine it smelled too good."

"Eugh, don't remind me," Hawke waved his hand in front of his nose, "every time we fought, I went home smelling like old socks."

They lapsed into a somewhat comfortable silence, Fenris clearly too busy with his leg to pick a fight with Anders, and Anders with trying to pretend he wasn't at least a little dizzy from all the spells he had been throwing around.

"You don't talk about your childhood much, Hawke." Fenris said, over the sound of the wind rolling down the mountain. It smelled green here, with that rich undertone of turned dirt and clouds near to bursting with rain. Hawke took a deep breath. There was no good air like this in the city.

"That's because it was boring." At Anders and Fenris' twin disbelieving looks he continued. "What, did you think having an apostate father was really that exciting?"

"I only assumed…"

"I had plenty of excitement as an apostate."

"Yes," Hawke rolled his shoulders back, "I'm sure a married man with children had exactly the same kind of excitement you had. Isn't it gorgeous up here? The Maker must have spent extra time when He made Sundermount."

He looked back. Both men had paused, and were glaring at him. "What?"

"Spent extra time filling it with bandits and mud, maybe," Ander picked up the hem of his robe, "guh, look at this."

"Call it a souvenir—genuine mud, all the way from Sundermount. Come on, Anders, a little dirt never hurt anyone."

"That's only because you've never seen a septic infection. I guess the rumors about Fereldan cuisine are true."

"Well, a balanced meal isn't complete without a healthy serving of dirt. Fenris, what do you think about this place? I mean, look at it."

Hawke swept his arm out over the southern side of the mountain. The sun hung lazily in the sky, blurred and softened by a smothering layer of clouds. Farmland stretched from the base of the mountain to Kirkwall—tiny squares of growing things. If Hawke squinted, he could pretend that he could pick out the crops by color: a bit of yellow for squash, deep greens for spinach, its lighter cousin was cabbage. The root vegetables were a touch harder, of course, but the tangled stalks dotted with pale blue blossoms could have been potatoes. Beyond that, the city sat, gleaming sandstone and bronze.

And then the ocean. Hawke could see what Isabela had fallen in love with—the water glittering like some deep gem, and the endless miles of freedom.

"I'm not exactly enraptured by forests."

Hawke's face fell. "What? No good sense, either of you. Didn't Tevinter have trees?

"Not really. Minrathous was a white city—marble, I think. And the land around it was mined for lyrium. They burned coal, not wood."

"It's supposed to be warm there, isn't it?" Anders asked, his usual ill-temper regarding Fenris lifted in favor of learning about the new and exotic.

"The city was stifling. And wretched. It smelled like disease and blood." He considered for a moment, and added. "And incense."

"Incense?" Hawke tilted his head. "Like in the chantry?"

"Similar. Everyone burned it to cover the smell."

"And I thought Kirkwall was bad," Anders said, "Lowtown doesn't exactly smell like roses, either."

"With you in it, I imagine it does not."

"What about you, Anders," Hawke stepped between them before a fight could break out, "What was it like… wherever it is you're from?"

Anders shrugged. "One circle is pretty much the same as the rest. No vistas or epidemics, I'm afraid."

He was clearly trying to avoid whatever discussion lie in the 'where did you come from?' direction, so Hawke let it go. No need to bring up something painful. He did enough of that on accident, and his mouth only had room for so many feet.

"Vistas indeed. Maybe we should stay long enough to catch the sunset?"

"No!"

Hawke laughed and slung an arm over each of their shoulders. "You two are more alike than you think."

Then, Fenris punched him, and Anders jabbed his still tender hand.

"Something I said?"

Title is from the Killers' Mr. Brightside.

One of the things that bothered me about DA2 (out of many) was how brief the romances are. You basically had three conversations to woo your companion of choice, and that was it. I thought DA1's design, where you have to make camp and take a break to talk to everyone felt much more natural, and it gave you more of a chance to get to know the characters, so to speak. Anywho, here's me correcting for that.