The knife slid in so easily. His healing sense flared wrong for a moment and he had to actively suppress the magic that wanted to flow into the open wound in his lover's chest. It was too late, any way. He had pierced Karl's heart.

But it wasn't as though he were killing Karl really. No, Karl was already dead. The brief moment where he had been himself had passed, making Anders keen internally. If he could somehow keep Justice out at will, be Justice without the blood and death, maybe he could have kept Karl with them, the real Karl, not the empty body that fell at his feet in a pool of blood.

"We should go before more Templars come," he heard himself say. The woman - Saoirse he remembered, her name was Saoirse - didn't say anything and he didn't stop to see if she followed, just walked away. I would rather die than be made tranquil, she had said. Help him, Anders.

It didn't feel like helping.

When he reached the clinic he was shocked to turn and find she was still there, along with the dwarf and the elf and her brother. He'd forgotten, of course, that he'd agreed to help them.

So had she, it seemed, for the moment.

"So, is this the part where you tell me you're an abomination?"

I just killed someone I loved, he felt like saying. Do you really want to have this conversation now? But he supposed he owed her one. At least she hadn't run away screaming as soon as Justice appeared. Most did.

Much good it did them.

"You're wrong," he said. "Though not far wrong."

He tried to explain. She looked skeptical, her brother, outright hostile (not that that was any different to how he'd looked when they'd first met), but she still didn't run away. Her eyes were clear and kind and her questions intelligent. He found himself trying to justify himself to her, even though, looking back now, he had been as stupid as a stump, really. But it had been Justice, who had been, when it came down to it, the only friend outside the Tower Anders had ever had, save Alim. The only friend who would never abandon him.

Couldn't abandon him, now. No matter if Anders wanted him to.

He wasn't sure, though, if he did. That first flush of horror hadn't quite faded, he still dreamt of the blood and the screaming, but not as often as he dreamt of that cold cell in Kinloch Hold and the endless months of silence…

He found himself offering to help her. Maker's breath, did I just offer to go with her to the deep roads? He missed people. Or maybe he just missed Karl.

When they walked out the door he turned back to his patients and his work and did his best to forget the feel of flesh parting to a blade.

When she came back a few days later asking him to help her sort out a problem she was having with a pirate named Isabela (and where had he heard that name before?) he agreed readily enough. It wasn't as though he were sleeping much these days in any case. It was fun, in its way. Like a good day with Alim and Oghren, although he was very happy to say he didn't like the elf with the… lyrium thing, it was unsettling at best to be that close to something that smelled like a potion but walked and talked. He found himself wondering if licking him would restore his mana.

It made him giggle to himself.

When they entered the chantry, Anders felt himself tense up, but it was more because he thought it should hurt, rather than actually hurting. They didn't go anywhere near where Karl had died been killed by him luckily, and the fight did a lot to erase the associations he had with the building. Still, he was happy to leave. He spent the walk through Hightown trying to work out where he knew the pirate from. There was something very familiar about the sway of her hips. Hypnotic too.

Hawke delivered him back to his clinic, after, walking with him, muttering something about making sure they didn't lose a good healer to the Templars, and he found he was grateful for the company, especially since the elf left them to slip into a mansion. Anders blinked as the elf bade them goodbye. Obviously he was doing something very wrong if an escaped slave had a nicer house than he did. Still, it wasn't as though he was doctoring nobles. Ferelden refugees trying to get to him here would undoubtably be arrested as soon as they showed their faces. And dispatching the elf now meant he had a good twenty minutes of walking with Saoirse Hawke, whom he was beginning to realise was…

…simply stunning.

He hadn't really noticed it when they'd been trying to help Karl, his mind had been on the past, but now, walking beside her, so easy and confident in her movements, with that evil glint in her eye that reminded him of Alim on a good day, when the demons and the past weren't making him violent or maudlin, and he found himself warming to her in more ways than one.

A year ago, he would have found something to say about her eyes, or the way she wore her hair, or her boots. Women liked it when you noticed their shoes. Now whenever he opened his mouth something stopped him from saying what he wanted.

No. Not something. Justice.

So when she said something about making decisions with a true heart the part of him that used to tease Velanna about her ears shoved Justice into the background and took control of his vocal chords.

"Kind, wise and beautiful. You must have made a deal with some demons yourself."

Her eyes widened and he could see they weren't brown, as he thought at first, but hazel - flecked with green, and she raised an eyebrow. No blush, though, just a slight lift of the lips. He thought at first he'd just made a complete arse of himself. Of course, that wouldn't have bothered him a year ago. He would have chalked it up to experience and tried a different line a few hours later. Or a drink. Drinks were good.

In the Tower, of course, he just would have asked the next girl who came along. Or the next boy. So long as they weren't wearing a tin suit, it was unlikely you'd get a worse response than "sod off".

It had taken him three or four escape attempts to realise that the outside world wasn't like that. Valuable lessons, those.

"I'm sorry," he stumbled. "It's just that… we've hardly met and I feel like I know you…" Andraste's tits, Anders, you're making it worse.

"Just keep calling me beautiful," she said, the lift of her lips deepening into a full smirk. "You can't go wrong with that."

"Oh, I'm sure I could get more creative," he responded, without thinking, and with the words more creative he thought of Karl and it was suddenly all wrong. He could feel the knife in his hands again, see the brand on Karl's forehead so clearly, remember the words he'd written, the promises he'd made. And with those memories, others started to surface, of blood and death and how many more people will die because of what I've done…

He all but pushed her out the door. He started to hope to the maker she wasn't going to ask him to go to the deep roads with her. There was little chance she wouldn't, though. She could heal, but she's not as good as he was (no one ever was, until Alim) and he was still a warden and she was too smart not to use him and his maps and when did he start wishing she'd use him for something more than his magic and his senses and how was he going to stop himself from plunging head first into a pit that would only drive him further towards the madness that is always just a few steps ahead?

Sleep. Sleep would be nice. Sleep without dreams would be better.

He knew that was unlikely though.