Author's Disclaimer: All copyrights to all licensed characters are owned by Bioware/EA. Original characters belong to the author. No infringement is intended by this work of respectful fanfiction.

In the early stages of Kestrel Hawke's new life in Kirkwall, she encounters the strangest healer she's ever met. This is the first installment of the Kestrel Hawke/Anders series.

Kirkwall

Darktown

He's been working since dawn in this filthy clinic that stinks of rot and despair, when an emergency case was brought to him. He hasn't eaten in... he doesn't remember. It could be hours. It's probably days. Still, as tired as he is, he senses it - or Justice does - the approaching crackle of the Fade, the bright font of otherworldly energy that is an untapped mage. His eyes sheet blue-white in defense, or in proactive aggression.

No! Not here, not now! I will take care of this.

Justice does not agree. His thoughts echo in his host's head, thunder and promise. This is a threat to our order. A threat to our cause.

Anders grits his teeth. I will take care of this!

He grabs for his staff, Warden stamina keeping his hands from shaking like a palsied old man's, and he spins. He can feel his staff's enchantments surge under his fingertips like eager hounds to a master's call as he goes on guard in more ways than one, glaring at the intruding mage and -

Oh, Maker... Her eyes.

Finely-drawn brows pull down, a perfect ebony line over eyes that are even bluer than the Fade itself. She's cut him off at the knees with that one look, disarmed and staggered him. He cannot so much as say what she looks like, this woman, this mage. All his impressions are caught up in what she isn't. Anders knows ugliness. He knows pain. He knows loss.

He doesn't know what she is.

The sensation of Justice roiling in the back of his mind like an agitated thundercloud makes him snap. "I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation. Why do you threaten it?"

That frown deepens, then smooths, furrows erasing themselves from the pale skin of her brow, but her eyes still hold him captive. "I'm just here to talk. I want to know about the Deep Roads." Now it's her voice that grips him. Cultured. Articulate. A highbrow voice in a woman, he is just now noticing, who looks like a decently armored Lowtown urchin.

It's his turn to frown. Anders does not like to feel off-balance. "Did the Wardens send you to bring me back? I'm not going."

Those unfairly blue eyes narrow, and he feels as if she's peering past his tattered coat and deep into places he doesn't want anyone who isn't wearing fur and walking on all fours to see into anymore. "Why wouldn't you go back?"

He smirks at her, purely because he can, purely to see if he can put her on the defensive. "Those bastards made me get rid of my cat. Poor Ser Pounce-a-lot." His sigh isn't entirely feigned. "He hated the Deep Roads."

The woman blinks, and Anders feels a not-entirely-unpleasent surge of triumph. "You had a cat... named Ser Pounce-a-lot?" She says it slowly, as if testing the words on her tongue. "In the Deep Roads?"

Anders raises an eyebrow of his own at her. "He was a gift. A noble beast. Almost got ripped in half by a genlock once." Memory makes him smile. "He swatted the bugger on the nose. Drew blood, too. But the blighted Wardens said he made me too soft, and I had to give him to a friend in Amaranthine."

Anders realizes his mistake when the other mage smiles, because now he's noticed her mouth. Plush and curved, rosy as a ripe apple, but her lips are chapped and cracked. The healer in him notices that; the man in him wants to remedy the lack of moisture with his tongue.

Justice rumbles in the back of his mind, warningly. This is a distraction.

I'll say.

"So you came to Kirkwall just to escape the Wardens." It isn't a question, and Anders is starting to agree more and more with Justice.

"You say that like it's a small thing." He scowls at her. "Yes, I'm here because there's no Warden outpost, no darkspawn, and a whole host of refugees to blend in with. As well as reasons of my own." Anders has made a career out of running away, first from the Circle, then from the Wardens. He wonders, a bit late, if he'll have to make a career out of running away from this woman, too.

Justice stirs again, closer. You are saying too much. Your weakness is dangerous.

I'm being honest. I may be a bastard, but I still have that.

Honesty is not for such as we.

If it isn't, my friend, then we're a lot closer to damnation than either of us wants to be.

In the end, Anders agrees to help the woman and her companions with his Warden's maps in exchange for their help bringing Karl out of the Chantry tonight. It's dangerous, and he knows it. He is staking his life, and Karl's, on this unknown woman and her unknown abilities, on the basis of nothing more than a gut hunch and those incredible eyes of hers. But he's long since given up regretting following his instincts; they've saved him more often than not. One night's work, and then I'll hand over the maps, and she'll be gone, and her damnable eyes with her.

You are a fool, Justice informs him, and then falls silent.