Chapter 1. A Box of Odds And Ends
"Healer! Anders!" Mirana's angry, that much is clear. Not afraid, though. Even so, it's an effort to choke back the surge within him, the tingle at his fingertips. Not now. It'll upset the patients. Already has, if the round-eyed look the elderly man beneath his hands gives him is anything to go by. "Wait, please," he murmurs, calm as he can. Like as not the man will flee before he returns and reap an infection in that leg for his troubles.
He crosses the crowded clinic floor quick as he can, which is not particularly quick in the end. It's a bad day, a crowded day, the noises and smells of suffering doing nobody any good. And there's a thief on his hands, like as not. He knows that tone. Mirana's still new enough to be frustrated by it. She'll learn. Of course people will try to take what they can, here where it would be freely given. How can they do otherwise, when kindness has been as scarce as anything else needed to sustain life?
Mirana's prisoner has a familiar face, for all that cocksure grin has a distinctly sheepish tinge to it. Well. It seems he has the capacity to be disappointed after all. "Hawke?"
"You know this one?" Mirana prods Hawke's side, none too gently. "Found him lurking around the cellars."
"I know him," and Maker, he sounds tired. He feels tired. He would have thought to call Hawke friend.
Hawke reaches back to scratch at his neck. "Don't suppose you'd believe I was in the neighborhood?"
The back of his neck prickles. Anders half-turns, and sure enough, old Messere Wrenchwright is stirring ominously. "Look to the leg injury in cot seventeen, will you, Mirana?" She gives him a flat look and treats Hawke to another stab of her bony fingers, but she goes.
He turns back to his unlikely thief, and Hawke very nearly shuffles his feet. Good. "I thought I'd bring some things by, is all," and he's still smiling. The nerve of him. "And, well, you looked busy so I thought, I'll just leave them in the storeroom, no need to cause a disturbance." He probably thinks that smirk is charming. "So much for that."
Anders scrapes his eyes up and down. No obvious bulges, no suspicious pouches at his belt. Whatever he's lifted, it isn't much. He'd been kind, so kind, that night with Karl. Anders can spare him the lecture, at least, even if he hasn't got the energy for false niceties with the weight of the day and this unexpected disappointment heavy in his gut.
The silence stretches. Hawke's smile strains, a little. "Maybe I'd better…" He waves vaguely at the door.
"You'd better," Anders confirms, and then startles when the man has the nerve to clap him on the shoulder on the way out.
There's so much work to do, so much need, that he can keep the bitter weight of their interaction out of his mind for the rest of the afternoon. Finally it's as quiet as it's going to get. Better to get it over with, down to the cellars, see how bad the damage is.
He counts the potions, twice, just to be sure. The numbers add up. He's about to go in for a third when his boot snags on a box, tucked just beside the elfroot stores, where it has no business being.
The box itself has clearly seen better days, suspicious stains better not investigated closely. Anders gives it a kick and nothing moves. Small mercies. Still, he's a little leery of digging around in it. The rats are industrious and feisty this close to the sewers. Strange - there's trousers, many pairs. They've seen better days, too, but the obvious tears in them have been skillfully mended. His fingers catch on something round toward the bottom. Whatever it is, it's been carefully wrapped. He unwinds the trousers and - it can't be. Lyrium, five flasks. There are more suspicious lumps in the very bottom of the box. He shakes out the last pair of trousers and - carrots, only just rubbery, six, no, seven of them, and a couple of onions. Just his luck - a greasy scrap of parchment shoved in the bottom of the box slices into a finger. There's just enough life left in his candle to look at the thing. A letter, it seems, the words carefully crossed out. Anders flips the paper and there's a message on the other side, the spiky handwriting nearly unreadable. "Wicked Grace, Hanged Man, tomorrow, 10th bell. Come if you have the time. Hawke."
Hawke. The laugh that wrenches out of him is not a pleasant one. Andraste's ample ass, he'd been a knob. Oh, Hawke had a hand in it, too, all guilty faces and sneaking about. Although that's his doing, too, isn't it - he'd never have accepted this and Hawke knows it, too. This is too much. For all Hawke is doing all right for himself, he's got a whole family up in Lowtown and precious little coin that he clearly gets the hard way. The trousers, sure - better patched than none at all, and Maker knows some of his patients could use a new warm pair. But this much lyrium, and real vegetables to boot…
Well. It's not so strange, is it, that a recent refugee would spare a thought for his less able fellows? There's desperation here, but kindness, breathtaking kindness, too. He sees it every day. It always warms him - people who have so little who help in the small ways they can. The rush of warmth that runs through him now, eroding the fatigue of the day, it's no different.
Anders tucks the note into a pocket. Cards, eh? Been a good long while, but he owes Hawke some company at the very least, after the reception he gave him today. It's a waste of time, frivolous, but it's not right to turn a helping hand away so roughly.
