Author's Note: I'm a bit of a sucker for bizarre pairings, so as soon as this one occurred to me I had to see if I could make it work. I'm such a big fan of Aveline/Donnic that it's hard for me to think of them not being together, but for the sake of this bizarre story that's the way it has to be. This is probably the first (and perhaps last) Aveline/Anders fic that you'll find out there, but it came together surprisingly easily for me. Who knows? Maybe I'll turn into a shipper.

Aveline would have rather been on patrol.

Many of the guardsmen had been trying to get out of their shifts so they could go to the party tonight, but she would have been more than happy to take a patrol off their hands in exchange for an excuse to avoid going. She couldn't bear to show her face after the fool she'd made of herself with Donnic. But none of the guards had asked her to cover for them—probably because they thought a patrol would be beneath the guard captain.

She was considering reassigning one of them anyway when Hawke appeared in her doorway. Handsome features lit up with a boyish grin, he cried, "There you are, Aveline! Have I got a mission for you!"

She wasn't sure that wandering off with Hawke would be the kind distraction she needed, but it was tempting just the same. Continuing to polish her shield, she asked, "Why? Because Fenris wasn't available and you need a warrior to round out your scouting party?"

A frown tugged at the corner of his mouth. "What? Are you still sore I didn't take you along last time?"

"Or the time before that."

"You've been busy."

She grunted.

"I promise it's important, a task for the Arishok."

Her polishing rag went still and she arched an eyebrow. "What is it this time?"

"Some Tal Vashoth holed up in a cave on the Wounded Coast. They stole something that the Arishok wants back. Finding it would make him very happy. Who knows? He might even leave the city finally." He smiled and she groaned. That sweet, little boy look in his eyes got her every time.

She said yes. Hawke was practically family at this point, and she couldn't bear to let him wander into a lion's den without coming along to protect him. And before she knew it they were in a cave fighting qunari-more qunari than any of them had expected.

Her boots slipped on the wet rock as she ducked beneath another blow, the qunari's axe burying itself in the rock where her left shoulder had been. Grimacing, she dove out of reach and landed on her shield as she rolled, metal scraping against the rough stone with a whine. Rolling back to her feet, she found that the new angle gave her an opening. She forced the savage back into an alcove where his movement was limited then stabbed up at him, shifting her angle at the last moment to slip past his guard and deliver a killing blow. He landed hard on his knees, a veil of blood obscuring the vitaar on his face.

Wresting his body from her sword with a kick of her boot, she turned back to her companions in search of her next target. Despite her little victory, the battle was going poorly. Hawke was pinned between a chasm and a forest of stalagmites, Isabela was surrounded by more qunari than even she had daggers and Anders was leaning heavily on his staff after watching the Tal Vashoth leader shrug off his most powerful spell. Aveline hesitated, uncertain which of her companions needed her assistance most, and that moment of hesitation allowed one of the qunari to get past her defenses.

His blade sliced across her thigh and he roared in triumph as she stumbled. Struggling to lift her shield before he landed another blow, she blocked one strike and then another, but her injured leg would not support her weight, so she could do little more than retreat and stab blindly at the qunari from behind her shield. The others were too overwhelmed to help her, so she didn't call out, but when she felt the damp wall at her back, she knew she couldn't keep fighting this way. Gritting her teeth, she lunged forward with her shield and cleared enough space to swing her sword. Her leg felt like a white-hot fire, but she pressed on, forcing it to support her as she finally landed another blow.

She was making progress, but the qunari struck her again, this time on her sword arm, and she heard a cry echo through the cavern. The howl was so feral it took a moment for her to realize that it had come from her. In her distraction, the qunari had managed to trap her beside a pit so deep she couldn't see the bottom. Gritting her teeth again, she readied herself for another push, but before she could take a step the qunari froze in a flash of wintry mist. A series of slashes from Anders' staff blade shattered him to pieces.

Sucking in a breath of relief, Aveline lowered her shield enough to lean on it, taking the opportunity to survey the battleground. The tide was finally turning. Isabela and Hawke had found each other in the melee and were fighting back to back, a pile of qunari growing at their feet. Warmth washed over her arm and she turned to see Anders standing beside her, his touch light and careful as he knitted her muscles back together with little jolts of energy. She tried not to shiver, though healing magic always made her itch uncontrollably, as if she were enduring the entirety of the normal healing process in a single instant.

"Let me see that leg," he said when the wound on her arm was closed and she shifted to give him better access, noting that Anders was not in the best of shape himself. More blond strands were falling loose than were restrained by the tie at the back of his head and blood had congealed along his forehead and down to his cheekbone, though she couldn't tell whether it belonged to him or their enemies. He looked tired, eyes dark with exhaustion, cheeks gaunt, and she felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn't have let Hawke drag him out of his clinic. It was bad enough that she had no restraint to refuse Hawke when his requests included her, but it was even worse that she said nothing when she could see him persuading another against their better judgment. Anders had been closing up shop when they arrived, and anyone could see that he needed nothing more than a good meal and a decent night's sleep—anyone, it seems, but Hawke, who had coerced Anders into coming along with only a few flirtatious words and the threat of a guilt trip.

She gasped when she felt his healing magic touch her leg. The itch was a hundred times worse since the cut was both longer and deeper, and she squirmed enough in reaction that Anders had to hold her steady with a hand on her hip. Focusing on his face to avoid looking at what he was doing, she watched his brows draw together in concentration, droplets of sweat drawing paths through the dirt on his skin. He slumped slightly in relief when he was done, rubbing at his eyes as if he had taken on her pain.

"Thank you," she said, gathering her sword and shield. "Stay back and rest a moment. I'll cover you."

That's when she noticed the fiery pot flying through the air. She cried out wordlessly in warning, but only caught a glimpse of Hawke's wide blue eyes on the other side of the cavern before the world erupted in fire and dust. The force of the explosion threw her back into Anders and they went flying, not into the bottomless pit, thankfully, but into a wall that she had thought was solid until it gave way behind them. Afraid of losing track of Anders in the dark, she managed to catch hold of his arm as they slid down one steep slope and then another, collapsing finally in an icy pool of standing water. Rock and dirt tumbled down around them, filling in the opening they had made far above and blotting out all the light.

"Anders?" she murmured, her voice faint in the all-consuming darkness.

A light flickered to life by her head, a small wisp that Anders set free from his fingertips the moment he had conjured it. The wisp barely lit the space around them, so she had no idea how large the cavern was, but she could see a nice dry spot in the distance that looked more comfortable than where they were now.

Turning back to Anders, she paused when she saw him pressing a hand against the back of his head. "You all right?"

"I think so. I hit my head when we landed." His fingers came away from his scalp with blood, but it was not a worrying amount, at least.

"Let's get out of this damp." She pointed to the dry spot and pulled on his arm to get him to his feet. He swayed slightly and nearly lost his balance the moment she released him.

"I must have a bit of a concussion," he said in a detached tone that she found unsettling.

"Lean on me."

The journey was a short one, but it felt entirely too long with Anders' shaky steps. He dropped to the ground as soon as they reached their destination, leaning back against a rocky outcropping and drawing his knees to his chest.

Aveline settled beside him, watching with worry as he bowed his head over his knees and focused his breathing as if he were in pain. "Can you heal yourself?"

"I lost my staff in the fall and I hardly had enough mana left to summon that little wisp. Nothing to do now but wait."

She huffed in anger. "I knew I shouldn't have let Hawke drag you along."

Anders' eyes flashed in the dim light, brown irises burnished to gold. "If I hadn't been here, you might have lost your leg."

"That's not what I meant," she said in a gentler tone. "But you've been working all day. You're tired. He had no business dragging you out on this fool's errand when you were in such a state."

She felt Anders watching her and was surprised to see a lopsided smile on his face; the expression was as close as he ever got to amusement, and it was rare enough that she felt a little flutter of warmth in her chest at the sight.

"I appreciate your concern, Aveline, but if you don't mind my saying so, your anger seems a bit misplaced."

"How so?"

"I'm not a child. I could have turned Hawke down if I hadn't wanted to come. I was craving a break from the clinic. And sometimes helping a friend can be less tiring than helping yourself."

She sighed. He was right, of course.

"Perhaps you are the one regretting coming along? Especially now that we are potentially trapped in a cave with no way out?"

She sighed again. "There's always a way out."

"True." He chuckled, the velvet rumble something she would have expected to hear coming from Varric, not him. "I'm actually rather good at escaping from places, you know? You should be thanking Hawke that I'm here."

She returned his smile begrudgingly. "Okay then, escape artist. What's our next move?"

"Just give me a minute to catch my breath and we'll start looking for an exit."

They sat for a few minutes in silence, the wisp's light casting flickering shadows over the distant cavern walls. Aveline watched the dance of light and frowned, her mind falling back into patterns of regret and recrimination that were all too familiar for her of late.

"What I said about Hawke," she said finally, "I suppose I was projecting my own feelings onto you. Sometimes I feel like he sees us all as nothing more than tools at his disposal. It's like he thinks of us as parts of his arsenal that he can just pull out as needed to tackle whatever selfish quest he's signed up for at the moment."

Anders' voice was quiet and carefully neutral, the voice of a counselor. "And when did this realization occur to you?"

"Why?"

He grimaced. "Was it after he botched that whole thing with Donnic?"

She turned on him, cheeks burning with sudden anger. "How dare you?"

"Wait," Anders protested, palms up in a plea for peace. "Hear me out. It can still be fixed. You just asked the wrong man for help."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Hawke is a bit of a thug, isn't he? He can be persuasive in his own brutish way, sure, but it's more the fact that he's so endearingly bad at it that wins people over most of the time. He shouldn't be giving anyone relationship advice. His idea of romance is a shag with Isabela, for Andraste's sake."

The common sense in his words calmed her. "I suppose that's true."

"What you need is someone who can fill in the blanks for you, match your intent with the kind of action that Donnic will understand."

"And you're offering to what? Be my interpreter?"

And there was Anders' roguish smirk again. "I may not be very romantically active at the moment, but I have more experience than most."

Leaning back against the wall, she considered his offer. "I appreciate the thought, Anders, but I'm afraid it's too late."

"Don't say that!"

"It's true. Donnic's engaged. They're throwing him a party tonight."

The scowl that blossomed on Anders' face was almost comical. "Well, that happened fast."

"Not really." Aveline shrugged, the weight of her mistake finally hitting her. "Apparently, for a guard I'm really unobservant. He's been courting the girl for years.

Anders' hand found hers in the darkness and gave it a gentle pat. "I'm sorry, Aveline."

She nodded, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. Pulling her hand away from his reassuring touch, she scrubbed at her face and tried to shake off the melancholy. "Well, it doesn't really matter now, does it? It's settled."

"If you say so. But when we get back, I'm buying you a pint at the Hanged Man," Anders vowed.

"You don't drink."

"That doesn't mean I can't buy you one." Brushing off his trousers, he pushed himself to his feet, leaning against a boulder to keep his balance. "Time to find a way out of here."

"What about your head?" she protested. "You should heal it first."

"It's not that bad. And I'd rather save my energy in case I need it for something more important." He flicked his fingers and the wisp returned to hover over them. "Shall we?"

They left a mark on the wall where they had been sitting so they would know where they had started. Then they made a circuit around the perimeter of the cavern in search of an opening. When they finally found one, it was above their heads by several feet.

"Ladies first," Anders said, cupping his hands for her foot.

"I don't think so. You're the one with the light."

He conceded her point and allowed her to boost him up, crawling into the fissure with a grimace of pain. Whether it was from the concussion or some other injury he had hidden, she wasn't sure, but she shifted impatiently from one foot to the other while she waited for him to investigate. Finally he returned, releasing the wisp to hover over him. "It's a tight fit, but it looks like it opens up into a bigger chamber." She handed him her sword and shield and then took his hand. She was surprised by his strength as he hauled her up the rock face, her boots finding little purchase on the slick surface to help along the way, but crawling over the edge was a bit awkward for them both.

She found herself lying on top of him before they were done, panting for air after the exertion. He was surprisingly warm, not as bony as she had assumed he would be, and she found the position more comfortable than she would have expected. A blush warmed her cheeks as she felt his stubble scrape against her forehead, his heart pounding in her ear, and she found herself remembering another body, another rough jaw and heartbeat. She hadn't been this close to a man since...not since Wesley. A tear tracked down her cheek, falling unbidden into the feathers on his coat.

"Maker's breath, you are like a ton of bricks," he gasped once he had caught his breath, and she flinched, rolling off of him quickly to hide her reaction. "Not in a bad way," he quickly revised. "I mean, you must be nothing but solid muscle." Letting his head fall back on the ground he groaned. "Maker's Breath, I'm making a great example of my honeyed tongue, aren't I? You were probably better off with Hawke's help, after all."

Focusing on retrieving her weapons, she tried to shake off the ghost she felt against her skin. "It's fine," she snapped, just to get him to stop talking.

"I'm sorry."

"Let's just get moving."

She could hear his teeth click as his jaw snapped shut, and she started crawling through the tunnel.