[Author's note: While each chapter is part of a larger narrative, they're each somewhat stand-alone as well, and they'll be narrated by various characters (mostly Hawke or Anders) in various persons and possibly tenses to best suit the needs of each individual piece.]

9:31 Dragon - Darktown

Though he might have been thoroughly underwhelmed by Darktown in the 'living-up-to-its name' category during his last (daytime) visit, the place really seemed poised to outdo itself when he visited again in the evening. Maker - visiting Darktown. He was starting to really absorb what Carver meant that time he asked if Hawke enjoyed feeling the looming threat of being mugged.

But at least if he did get mugged, he now knew where to go to fix it.

Which, lovely as looming threats were, was really the only reason he was down here to begin with.

The clinic door was closed but not locked, so he pushed it open, half-expecting to be greeted suspiciously by a crowd of patched-up chokedamp-breathing refugees like those past two times he'd been there. There were no patients here tonight though; nor were any of the volunteers around. There was just Anders, standing over a table with a mortar and pestle in hand and a furrow of concentration on his brow. A cauldron of water sat poised over a flame on the other side of the room.

"I bet I know somebody who hasn't eaten today!" Hawke declared as a means of getting the healer's attention, lips twitching into a small grin despite himself.

Anders looked up from his work and momentarily stopped mushing herbs or whatever substance into tiny powdery pieces. "Hawke? What are you doing here?" Then, "And unless you're referring to somebody else, you lost that bet. I eat in the mornings."

"Oh. Well. Of course I was. I was referring to myself." Nevermind that knowing yourself doesn't exactly count and possibly isn't even proper use of the language, and he hoped that Anders didn't bother to point that bit out either.

But he doesn't, which Hawke is absolutely perfectly okay with. "That's a shame," he says instead, turning his head to the not-yet-boiling water and conjuring another spark of fire. "I realise you need a lot of coin to get in on that expedition, but you shouldn't starve yourself to do it. There's plenty of time to starve in the Deep Roads. Speaking of which, shouldn't you be out trying to earn that coin?"

And then there's a terrible wormy little twist of doubt in his stomach that makes him awfully nervous, despite the half-smirk in Anders' tone, and what if Anders actually doesn't want him here and he's just intruding and being obnoxious and running his mouth the way he always does, and Anders isn't really amused by his stupid jokes at all because who ever actually was?

"I can go. If you have work to do," he blurts out, running a hand through his hair and studying the dreadfully bare shelves of potions because weren't shoddily-constructed home-made shelves just fascinating?

"No, no," Anders replied quickly with a shake of his head that sends a few strands of yellow hair fleeing to freedom from their precarious position just barely inside the band that held his ponytail. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just that, if you're trying to make money, there are better ways to do it than hanging around the free healer in Darktown."

The tension in Hawke's shoulders and limbs began to dissipate, which only made sense what with the vastly decreased likelihood of getting mugged inside Anders' clinic.

"I don't spend that much time here," he replied. A little too quickly. "And I'm getting close to the 50 sovereigns. Funny story - the Arishok never actually made a deal with that dwarf merchant who wanted the explosive powder, but he made him pay me anyway."

"I'm curious as to what you consider seeing somebody frequently, then," Anders murmured, one eyebrow raised and the corners of his lips pulled up into something like the halfblooded child of a smile and a smirk. Hawke was pretty sure the puddle of goo at his feet had once actually been comprised of his internal organs, before they'd melted not five seconds previously. "You were last here, what, three days ago? Not counting coming to get me to help you look for Feynriel. What did his mother say, out of curiosity?"

He shrugged, exaggeratedly. "She took it rather well, all things considered. I think she likes elves better than templars."

As she should." And there was the hardness in his voice again, which Hawke didn't exactly relish even as he saw his own feelings reflected back in it like his face in a clear pond. Perhaps best not to talk about the templars.

Hawke stared determinedly at his scuffed-up boots, which seemed to have acquired the wonderful new beginnings of a hole in the left toe area. "If you really are busy and I'm distracting you, I'll leave," he said. "And maybe not just show up unannounced so often. Or something. I just… I've never met another mage before. Who wasn't an immediate family member. And it's a lot bloody more interesting talking to you than sitting in Gamlen's house staring at the inside of a closet. I mean I know I've got nothing on the people around here, but Maker, that hovel was not meant to sleep more than two people! Three at the absolute most."

Anders chuckled at this and Hawke managed to determinedly resist the urge to grin like a bloody maniac. Or idiot. Take your pick. Well, more like grin and reveal his true inner idiotic maniacal nature. Or something similarly poetic.

Abandoning the mortar and pestle, he went over to gaze critically at the pot of water. "Still not boiling?" Hawke quipped.

Anders replied with a negative shake of the head. "No, it's not… You honestly aren't a bother. I rather like having company for these kinds of tasks. Spending too much time alone in my head gets… well, anyways." A soft reddish glow that made the air shimmer like a too-hot midsummer day suffused his hands, and bubbles began to float to the top of the cauldron. Small, slow ones first, then faster and bigger until the water churned. Hawke's family had never used magic for anything so mundane as heating or cooling water, even though Father undoubtedly had sufficient training and control and Bethany had quite the knack for fire and ice.

"You mentioned you had other mages in your family?" Anders said, and Hawke blinked at the intrusion. The mind-reading intrusion, which made Hawke half want to jump and shout about blood mages like a panicked templar recruit. But he didn't, because that would probably be bad taste even for him. Anders sounded curious, almost wondering. "Not your brother, no?"

Hawke gave a laugh that sounded a lot like something choking to death, and he might have even snorted at the end. "Carver? You're shitting me. If my brother were a mage, I think I'd die of laughter." A beat, as he considered the thought with a degree of seriousness. "That or I'd cry myself to sleep every night."

"Oh, surely he can't be that bad… Although, I rather see your point," Anders added dryly after a moment's contemplation.

"But no," Hawke murmured, hopping back onto the table where Anders worked as the other mage began adding all his crushed-up medicine-y plants to the roiling water. "I meant my father and sister." His feet swung back and forth and his fingers drummed idly against the wooden surface.

Anders turned halfway 'round, brushing his hands off so any renegade plant matter would make its way into the water for a short, scalding plant-death. He had that sort of look about him, questioning but not wanting to probe too deeply for potential fear of the answers the questions would dig up. Which he probably had plenty of experience with, digging up things best left alone, what with the Wardens and darkspawn and Deep Roads escapades he'd alluded to once or twice. "But they're not here with you. Were they…?"

And Hawke could tell what he was going to say before his lips even began to form the words, and he cut him off. "No, they weren't captured. Father was far too clever for the templars to find him, and he taught us well." He tipped his head back and put a hand to his forehead for dramatic effect. "Alas, he perished of a dreadful blight not four years past. Not the Blight, you see, just a blight, full of all sorts of gross disease-y symptoms that I'm sure you could've cured the entire village and surrounding ten-mile radius of in a heartbeat if they didn't do silly things like lock you away in a tower." That didn't sound bitter. Certainly not. It was clever and amusing, and that was the exact opposite of bitter. "This was before we found out that the whole disease thing really didn't deserve the name, compared to the darkspawn."

"What about your sister?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," he answered, leaning back, voice all nonchalant as though it would help untie the knot forming in his stomach. "Crushed to pulp by an ogre when she tried to save us from it."

The sound of stirring quieted abruptly, like the fall of darkness in a room where somebody blew out the only lit candle. Hawke hazarded a glance in Anders' direction only to see exactly what he hadn't wanted to find, namely that Anders had abandoned his task entirely and was looking straight at him with the most distressed I'm-a-sad-puppy eyes ever, the ones he'd pulled out when he was telling Hawke about the lover he'd mercy-killed not days before (right after Hawke had stuck his foot so deep in his mouth it was probably coming out the other end, yeah real good job with that and perhaps he should not be thinking about sticking things in mouths any time soon for that matter). "I'm so sorry," he said, shock clear in his voice. "I wouldn't have asked…"

"Yeah, well." Hawke sat up again. "You don't have to be sorry. You didn't know." More silence. Damn those awkward silences. "It does seem to always be the nice ones who end up with horrible undeserved deaths, doesn't it? I mean she was always sweet and helpful and didn't get bitter or angry about being on the run and having to hide from everybody even if she did always wish she was normal, which of course made me just want to smash things because it should be everybody else wishing they weren't rotten bastards rather than Bethany wishing she didn't have magic…"

Maker, he was ranting and rambling and if there was any justice in the world Anders would just smack him upside the head to get him to shut up - and then he nearly laughed aloud because Ha. Justice.

He was a complete ass.

"Hawke?" He raised his head and blinked and then nearly jumped and scrambled off the table backwards in a rather painful and end-up-landing-on-your-head fashion, because Anders had somehow appeared right in front of him and he hadn't even noticed. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He rubbed his suddenly itching eyes and sighed heavily. "Yes. No. I don't know. I'm… not very good with people. I just start babbling and words come out and I have no idea what I'm saying. It was always easier just to avoid everybody rather than having to monitor everything I said, so nobody would get any suspicions about apostates because I was an idiot and started shouting about mages deserving to be free and… well let's just say practise is a very good thing."

Anders put a hand on his knee in a way that Hawke guessed was supposed to be comforting and companionable-y except it rather wasn't because holy sweet Maker Anders' hand was on his knee, and then he smiled and said "Well, you're perfectly welcome to shout about mages deserving their freedom around me. Perhaps not if we're in the Chantry or the Gallows again, but down here I think it's just fine. I'll probably join you if you don't mind."

"Of course not! The more the merrier. We can start a choir! And I think we should sing in the Chantry and the Gallows; it'll be much more interesting than the Chant. That has to get so dull."

And then the other mage chuckled again and his insides felt sort of expand-y and floaty and this was the absolute best feeling in the world, he decided. "Didn't you mention the other day that both times you've been to the Chantry here, it's involved killing people? I don't think the sisters like to let in people with that kind of a record, regardless of how good their singing voice is."

Hawke blinked in faux-innocence. "Did I ever say I had a good singing voice? I hope not; it's really rather dreadful. I distinctly remember Carver attempting to beat me over the head with a stick for singing while he was in earshot. But you, on the other hand… I'll bet you're good at a lot of things."

What was that he'd been thinking so recently about feet in mouths?

But Anders only smiled, a little cheekily if he looked close enough. "No, I can't say I've ever been that musically inclined. Somebody, and I'm not saying who, once enchanted the entire apprentice quarters in the Circle Tower to echo any sound produced at three times the volume, and then gave all the instruments in the place to the six and seven year olds. We weren't allowed music except as a very special privilege, after that."

"How did you find out you were a mage?" Hawke asked abruptly, because he'd been wanting to ask since he'd met Anders and had somehow always forgotten when he was actually around him and wasn't that just so annoying. Well, to be honest he wanted to ask Anders pretty much everything about his life because finally here was another real live mage, in the flesh, just like him, and not beaten to death or anything morbid…

The laugh was gone and Hawke wondered if maybe it's a sad story and he shouldn't have asked. Probably. But Anders answered him anyway, so it was alright. He hoped. "Me? It's really the most clichéd mage story ever; I'm sure you've heard it quite a few times before," he said. Hawke shook his head and wondered if that's what it was like at the Tower, people all comparing their stories and deciding which ones followed some sort of script. Small child gets angry, turns unsuspecting companion into a newt, villagers are alarmed, templars are called in and help the companion get better and then march the poor child off to the Circle. Or something.

"I accidentally set fire to my family's barn," Anders continues. "I was twelve rather than five or six, and I was playing with lightning rather than fire, but otherwise it's pretty much just like what you'd imagine when you think 'mage origin story'. My father was angry and thought my magic was a curse from the Maker, but my mother cried when the templars took me."

His voice was quiet and distressed, but carried nowhere near the raw emotion it had but a couple days ago when he mentioned the same subject. They come to your little rat-spit village...Despite how Hawke normally got, he couldn't quite bring himself to make another tasteless joke at this. Even if Anders didn't seem quite so broken up as he had before, the topic seemed to deserve a degree of seriousness. Or maybe he was just tired of always acting like it didn't bother him, and it was nice to give the moment some honesty.

In another corner of his mind, it's also that he's trying to imagine that scene with his own family, and it fits like a piece of clothing that pinches tight in some places and flops around with far too much loose fabric in others. Father had always meant security and safety and responsibility and hot afternoons spent behind the house making objects hurtle through the air while Beth conjured ice crystals in the back of their shirts to keep them cool.

And hiding, and denial. Angry admonishments that no matter what somebody's done to or said about mages, you are not to go screaming at them and pelting them with their own family's eggs, which he'd thought was insult added to his (numerous) injuries that the group of older boys in question had so kindly provided him with, all on top of a mountain of unfairness. You saw what they did to that girl, he'd shouted tearfully, trying and failing to sit up properly due to his broken ribs, which Father wouldn't heal for him because then people would be suspicious and they'd have to move again. You heard them admit that they raped her and killed her, and they talked like she was a thing and everybody let them go because they said they panicked about her 'lying' to them -

Father had held him close and let him sob into his tunic, repeating a whispered it's not fair and they deserve to be dead over and over like a litany. I know, son, he'd replied, every time. Hawke was twelve. They moved shortly afterward anyway. Nobody wanted to live in that village after that.

"Hawke?" Anders' voice now, not Father's, and he's sitting on a rickety table in Darktown, not in his bed. And he's not sore all over and barely able to move. Also twenty-three, rather than twelve. Always good, that. "You looked… troubled. And far away. Do you want to talk?"

"And here I thought I rarely did anything but," he said, halfhearted. But the thought stuck or burrowed in or whatever metaphor he wanted to use. Was that something he could do? Talk with Anders? He never talked with anybody.

But what else did he come down here to do, if not talk with him? He was somebody safe. It felt weird in his mouth when he'd formed the consonants and vowels, but it was true. Somebody safe, who knew him and understood him even though you've known each other for all of eight days counting today; what are you, crazy?

… Yes.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Anders seemed to have abandoned his potion-making task, or perhaps finished it, which struck him as more likely given how the man was stacking flasks and vials on that one rickety shelf he'd inspected. It seemed like ages ago.

"Do you want to go out and find some place that sells food?" he asked him, looking over his shoulder expectantly as he placed the last flask. "Since it's that time of day and, well… I'd offer you something, but I don't actually own anything I could let you eat in good conscience."

"Yet you eat it yourself?" Hawke replied, raising an eyebrow. Changing topics. Changing topics was good. "I'm thinking maybe you should focus more on your own well-being than mine if that's the case. So yes, going somewhere else to eat sounds like a wonderful idea. Have anywhere in mind?"

Now it was Anders' turn to raise an eyebrow. "You can't think I go out to eat regularly. I was actually hoping you might have a suggestion. "

"Nope, fresh out, unless you want to go to the Hanged Man. I suppose we could… wander aimlessly, until we see something that looks decent and not about to cost us the entirety of my Deep Roads savings?"

"Wandering aimlessly it is then!"