A/N: I felt like there needed to be an explanation for why I always end up with crazy-eyes Anders by the end of the game, no matter what I do or who I romance. This is my first time writing anything that might approach smutty (forthcoming chapters), so… well… be gentle, sweet reader.

Rated M for heavy emotional themes, sex, references to violence and general angst.

Get out. These words are hot coals, burning into the dry emptiness of her heart.

She is numb, and helpless. Hawke turns back to stare at the rickety door to their home in Lowtown, the door she's just closed, perhaps forever. She reaches out to touch it with aching, shaking fingers, once, longingly, and forces herself to turn away before the sound of her mother's wrenching sobs can pierce through the barrier and crawl into her ears with their accusation. Before she reaches into that pouch on her belt, the one that holds the vial half-full of the poison she'd held to Bethany's lips, and is tempted again to swallow it.

She is filthy, bloody, and stinking of darkspawn, without even so much coin in her pockets to make her worth robbing for all that she will soon be a wealthy woman. She will not trouble Varric, though. She knows he had loved her sister, called her Sunshine, and she will not allow herself to add to his grief or his guilt. He has Bartrand to worry about, after all, and that is more than enough. Fenris for his part will not even look her in the face and she cannot find it in her to blame him. He had seen the truth of her, there in the Deep Roads. He knows now what she was capable of, what hideous, terrible, necessary things she can do.

The expedition is a success, if one can call it that. It has come at too high a cost.

She lets her feet lead her blindly through the streets to the doorstep of the only one she can think will welcome her. Someone who knows the face of the hideous, the terrible, and the necessary and does not flinch away.

He leaves a bowl of milk out for the cats and finds her sitting with her back against the wall of his clinic, her knees hugged to her chest. She seems to be asleep, and Anders cannot tell how long she has been sitting there. Her silent appearance is startling; he had not known yet that they were back, still breathlessly awaiting word from Varric that they had returned safely and hoping against hope that the results are worth celebrating. But no word has come and there Hawke is on his doorstep, blood spattered and dirty.

He thinks he might be dreaming, hallucinations born of concern for those he has come to call friends, and because even these few weeks have been a torment of missing her. He explores the thought, letting his hand come down to brush through her hair; it is stiff and matted beneath his fingertips.

A tendril of fear winds through him, white-hot and dizzying, and he sinks to his knees to look into her face. "Hawke?"

"Anders."

Not sleeping then. Relief brushes aside the fear.

For some reason she is smiling; it is a hideous, terrible smile that wavers on the verge of something very like tears. "Forgive me, but I don't think I can stand up."

It is all the excuse he needs to hook his arms around her back and beneath her bent knees, and he lifts her up against his chest. He is strong for a mage, stronger than his lean frame implies, and she is only a light burden even in her armor. She does not move much, and her body feels brittle and incorporeal in his arms.

Ironic isn't it, how everything you touch ends up broken?

He cannot be sure if that is Justice ringing bitter words in his ears or just his own troubled mind. For all that he often fantasizes about what it would be like to hold her, this is not what he pictures.

He carries her into the clinic and kicks the door closed behind them, a sign to those who come looking that he should not be disturbed. As gently as he can he sets her down on one of the cots and comes to his knees yet again, looking up at her with a brow furrowed with worry and concern. She sits up on her own and yet her eyes are closed. The expression on her face is a mask, unreadable, but she wears her weariness like a cloak that settles heavy on her shoulders.

Her armor is filthy, crusted with blood and gore. He can smell the taint of darkspawn blood on her and the iron bitterness of it makes his stomach clench and roil, bringing back unpleasant memories that he hastens to shove to the back of his mind. Ignoring it will not make it go away. Ruthlessly he shoves Justice down as well, holding him there until his presence fades.

Hawke sits still while he gently strips her of her armor, making a pile of it to one side. Her passive compliance is so unlike her it makes his heart thunder in his chest, convinced she is dying there before his eyes until he checks every inch of her over and finds nothing more than a few scrapes that are effortlessly eased away.

He frowns, confused, and begins to look again in earnest when she finally speaks. Her voice does not break, but she does not sound like herself, only a hollow echo. "Bethany is dead, Anders. I killed her."

It all comes pouring out of her then, and he falls back, his hands coming away from her to rest useless in his lap.

"I had to. I didn't have a choice. The Taint- we were betrayed. Bartrand left us for dead, and there was nothing I… Nothing that could be done. We were so far away from any help, and she tried to be so strong, but at the end…" He watches as Hawke swallows and reaches, the half-empty vial of dark liquid coming almost too easily to her hand. She gives it to him, the bottle dropping out of her cold fingers as though she cannot really even feel that it is there. "She couldn't."

It was strong poison he recognizes; the end would have been swift and gentle. The small glass bottle feels like fire in his hand and he can only wonder why she's held on to it, certain the reminder would bring nothing but pain. And then it comes to him and his gaze narrows on her, a realization growing of the purpose of this aching memento pressed into his palm.

She hands him the bottle as a final act of courage and a silent plea for forgiveness. If he were to tell her to drink it, to drain the vial dry, she'd do it.

Do it, Justice whispers, and let us be free of this distraction.

The thought makes him sick, and he tucks the poison away within his robes.

She is pale and drawn, her eyes closed against whatever demons might be there to devour her if she opens them. He can see the regret on her face, a flash of loneliness across her features. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come here. I just… couldn't think of anywhere else to go. It is my fault, and I understand if you blame me." Like everybody else. He hears those unspoken words as though they were uttered aloud, and wonders what has been said to her, who has dared to put those thoughts in her mind.

Poor kitten. Poor little bird. The sight of her destroys him.

She tries to stand but is shaky on her legs, and his hands close warm around her icy shoulders. "Stay."

Her lips tighten and for a moment he thinks she might weep, but no tears come. "Stay. Just stay." The words are repeated, whispered over and over as his hands come up to cup her cheeks, to smooth back the wild locks of hair from her face. When she finally nods he rises and wraps her in a blanket, moving off into the background to draw her a bath. The water in Darktown isn't the cleanest, but at least with the help of a small tingle of magic he can make it warm.

She waits silently with her head bowed, motionless whenever he casts her worried glances over his shoulder. When all is ready she lets him lift her again, and he helps her to stand when it seems like her legs will not hold her. He divests her of the blanket and the stained, stiffened padding beneath her armor, hesitating to strip away her smallclothes until she lifts one shoulder in a listless shrug of inconsequence.

The tub is too small for him to use easily for anything resembling a soaking, but with her legs folded to her chest it is room enough to serve her needs. As he kneels again in the dirt and gently begins to wash the blood and sweat from her back, he realizes that this is the first time he's ever seen her fully unclothed. This too is not as he imagined, and he finds himself grateful that no ill-timed desire rises to hinder him and make him hate himself.

Her body is a panoply of bruises, a map of her trials and the unfortunate hurts inflicted on her skin. Her muscles are taut, strained, and she flinches now and again even beneath the excruciating gentleness of his touch. He can only imagine what happened to her, in darkness down there in the Deep Roads. She said they'd been betrayed; her blistered and swollen feet make him wonder how far they must have travelled to escape.

He finds the row of wounds on her forearm; four parallel cuts, clean and even in length in contrast to the ragged wounds left behind by darkspawn swords, and his voice breaks on her name. He is terrified by the power of this tragedy; it has taken all of the light out of her and pushed her to harm herself.

"It helps," is all she can say, and her arm is pulled from his grasp and held to her chest, in equal measures protective and ashamed. It hurts him to see her like this, but still he understands. He wears his own scars, his own maps of bitterness, sorrow, and better things left behind.

His robes are filthy from kneeling on the floor, and now they are wet, but he doesn't care. His arms come around her from behind and he pulls her back against him, just wanting to hold her for a moment, to protect her. She allows him this, lets him, as if they are both afraid that if he lets go she'll simply disappear.

She is so unnaturally quiet; her stillness is unsettling. He finds himself wishing that she'd cry, just to have it out of her but it seems she's forgotten how. The bottle of poison seems to burn against him where he's secreted it inside his robes.

"I should have been there with you," he murmurs into her hair. "I should not have let you go."

"I could not ask that of you, Grey Warden or no. Not when you didn't wish to come. I could not have forced that nightmare on you."

Nightmare. The word is apt. "What you did for Bethany was a great act of compassion."

She sighs, her body seeming to shrink inward, fading by degrees. "I know. It does not make it any easier."

He finds her something to wear eventually, one of his much-darned shirts that could be more or less relied upon to be clean. Anders allows himself a small thrill of satisfaction upon seeing how it dwarfs her, but holds himself in check even as he lifts her in his arms again and carries her to his bed so that her newly-clean feet won't have to touch the now somewhat muddied floor.

It is his every intention to sleep on one of the cots in the clinic, or even on the floor of the tiny partitioned space he calls his bedchamber, but when her hand closes on his sleeve when he begins to draw away, he buckles under the longing and crawls in with her. She curls up on her side and tucks her body against his like a kitten seeking to nestle beneath his chin. He lets his arms come around her so achingly slowly, afraid to alarm her now that she seems to have found some small measure of peace. She doesn't protest and so he holds her, resting his stubbled cheek against the freshly washed softness of her hair. Holds her close, and tries to make himself believe that all of his intentions are altruistic.

You're just torturing yourself. On that, both he and Justice can agree.