A giant thank you as always to nh09jrb, my wonderful beta and the person who helps ensure that you all get the absolute best story out of me.

Temrys, Mat, and the contentious twins belong to me, everything else does not. Enjoy!


Oh, I have the memory of trust
I tried to keep it close
And oh I have the memory of trust
I swallow it whole

Anders was waiting up for her when she finally stumbled her way through Darktown and back to his clinic, drunk enough to make even Isabela blush. Morning was no more than an hour away, and Rowenna was pitching and rolling like a sailor on shore leave. "So," he drawled lazily, his voice betraying none of the things that were rambling through his head. "Is this a good drunk or a bad drunk?"

Rowenna rewarded his question with a ferocious grin and leaned against the closed door. Her left leg lifted from the floor and she began unlacing her boot, impressing him with how little she swayed despite how very inebriated she was. "Drunk isn't the right word," she corrected. Her thick Tevinter accent was more pronounced under the influence of the Hanged Man's fire whiskey, and he almost winced. She sounded very much like Fenris, her consonants sharp and angled, almost as pointy as her sword. He was reminded again that these two were inextricably linked, his stomach churning uncomfortably at the thought. "My sweet little possessed mage, I am tossed and hammered and three sheets to the wind, I was drunk about an hour ago."

"Right, thank you for the clarification." His voice was a disapproving rumble, and Justice let out a noise of agreement in the back of his mind. Nevertheless, he crossed the room and knelt before her, sobriety lending his fingers a grace that hers did not possess. Under his ministrations, her boots were unlaced and pulled from her feet, placed neatly by his door. The main room of the clinic was mostly dark, with only guttering candles to keep the night at bay. It was also empty of patients, and of Rowenna's companions who had moved into a vacant house nearby. Only Rowenna remained here in the clinic, night after night, for reasons that she had not explained.

There was something about standing barefoot in the dark in Anders' clinic that had Rowenna feeling strangely defensive, though she knew she could chalk a good deal of her nerves up to her tussle with Fenris earlier in the night. Her skin didn't seem to fit her quite so well, being pushed at by hate and revenge from the inside. Her unanswered demands of why still rang in her ears alongside Fenris' refusal. She sighed tiredly and closed her eyes, her head falling back to rest against the stained wood of the door. The fight, the chase, the incident in Hawke's garden and now the liquor had exhausted her, and her heart beat slowly in her chest, reminding her with each thump that she lived while her kin did not. She ached for the refuge of sleep, but Anders was not quite ready to relinquish her over to it.

"What happened with Fenris?" he asked quietly, dubious as to whether or not he actually wanted to know. Watching the two of them disappear into the late night-early morning darkness of Darktown had twisted his stomach nervously. The elf was dangerous, and with Rowenna's inclination to hurl herself headfirst into a fight and lick her wounds later he'd been worried, but Declan didn't seem overly concerned and so they'd not given chase.

A bitter laugh spilled from her lips and the tilt of her chin directed his gaze to her face where her mismatched eyes met his almost defiantly. "Do you mean tonight, or do you mean before?" she responded. The heaviness of her accent rolled over him, foreign and different, the sound of a place where mages were not less than people, but free. He could not remember what about it had reminded him of Fenris.

Helplessly, he ran a hand through his hair, disturbing the tie that restrained it. "The first one, though I won't deny that I am curious about the second."

"Fenris is still in possession of his life, what little it's actually worth." She answered. Cold anger twisted her lips. "If you want the other story, ask Declan and maybe he'll tell you. I won't be recounting it ever again. Living it was enough."

He heard her speaking, but was not truly listening. Caught in his own thoughts, in his own speculation, he pressed further in spite of himself, questioning her, suddenly desperate to understand. "Why are we friends? Are we friends? Why do you always come back here? Why do you help me with a cause that means nothing to you?" The words slipped unbidden from his lips before he could stop them. Unable to take them back, he stared with still breath. Even Justice seemed to grow uncharacteristically quiet inside him, anticipating with some trepidation the answer to their question.

"You and me? We're the same. We have nothing, or close enough to it to count. That little bit we have left is the taste of freedom still in our mouths. We know what it means. We had it and then it was gone, and we might never be able to get it back like it was, but we will have our justice all the same." The flinty pitch in her voice and the steel in her eyes had the spirit inside of him clamoring. Inside his head, Justice was crowing triumphantly at the true discovery of a kindred soul. Anders felt himself falling into the spell her words were weaving, felt the fervor of truth and conviction beckoning to him. "Every man deserves to be free," she whispered fiercely, "no matter what."

"You know," Anders murmured, his eyes alight with the fire of her words, "You're not half bad when you're not angry."

She laughed mirthlessly and ran a hand over her face. "Shows what you know, mage. I'm always angry."

A wry smile crooked his lips. "That makes two of us then."

"So let's throw a party," she shot back sarcastically, retreating into her aching head with a close of her eyes. She wanted him to leave her alone and stop dredging up the past with his curiosity. The night already seemed so much longer than it should have been. She'd snuck out to meet Isabela for a night of drinking after the lights in Darktown had been extinguished, only to find out from her what Fenris was about. Waiting for him had taken more out of her than she cared to admit. Sitting there atop the boxes, eyes pinned on the spot where she knew he would emerge, just waiting, was nerve wracking. Her thoughts had raced at breakneck speed and she'd been rooted in place, unable to move even if she'd wanted to. It had been much easier to hate him when he was a distant memory, far out of her grasp. Caught glimpses here and there had already sent whispering worms of doubt into her resolve. Now, intermingled with the memories of what he'd done were memories of who he had been, what he had been to her before that ruinous day. Her mind was betraying her and she used that anxiety to fan the flames of her anger, pushing back images of a barely there smile and replacing them with blood stained sand and still bodies. Forgiveness was not an option. Not when her people's blood cried out for vengeance from the jungles of Seheron.

"One more question," Anders prodded. He wouldn't allow her to escape just yet and hastily pushed to his feet, caging her against the door with his arms, his hands resting on either side of her shoulders. "What was it like, in Seheron? It seems so far away, unreal almost."

The demand in his voice opened Rowenna's eyes and he was unsettled. She looked at him with both eyes, blind and whole, and saw him.

"People told us," she began, the mottled milky white of her useless eye piercing him as though it could still see, "that we were fighting for an ideal, not a reality. Kabethari. Caught between the Quanri and Tevinter, we paid for our freedom with blood, but it was ours. We won it, we earned it, and that little piece of Thedas knew no master." Iron laced her words, infusing every syllable with the undeniable truth of someone who stood firm in their beliefs and refused to be shaken. "The price was worth it - what we did it to get it was worth it. The people who died for it weren't forgotten. Our honored dead carved for us a place where every man, every woman, and every child, could be undeniably free."

Inside him, Justice roared his approval.

"What happened to you, Rowenna?" His voice was low, and nearly quiet enough that she could have pretended not to hear it, but he knew she had. "What's Fenris got to do with all this? Why are you here?" In that moment, in the flicker of her eyelids as she turned her gaze from his, he felt his blood stir with the nearly oppressive desire to kiss her. He fought the urge back down where it belonged, shaken by the powerful instinct, bemused by how suddenly it manifested.

"Don't," she snapped. The whispered warning in her voice gave him pause. "Don't look for answers where I won't give you any. Fenris and I have unfinished business, that's all you need to know. Justice will be done." Anders took a step back; the unsettling thought of this is what I sound like to everyone else whispering in his ear. Distracted, he didn't bat an eye when Rowenna forced her way past him and stalked to the dark corner where she slept.

Finally alone, Anders ducked into his room in the back. Sleep would not come to him tonight, and for once, the source of his distraction was not the Fade spirit in his head. "Justice will be done," he repeated to the darkness. His arms found their way behind his head as he stretched out on his lumpy cot, trying in vain to find slumber. The normally lonely clinic seemed less so tonight, and he had to admit that it was nice to have someone nearby again. During the long stretches of night when Justice was unrelenting and he could not sleep, her presence in the next room quieted him. He missed the companionship of the Warden Commander Cousland, and Howe, even the dwarf was missed on such sleepless nights. Rowenna's residency in his clinic went far in applying the balm to his reclusive soul, though she was not by any means a soothing or sentimental person. She had an annoying habit of riling his blood and pushing him into heated debates or arguments, sometimes to the point of drawing Justice out. She did not ask him about his friends or his lovers, she wanted to hear of his adventures. His repeated escapes from the tower in particular, fascinated her, and he had found himself surprisingly happy to tell her about them, to regale her with stories from the days when he had simply been Anders and nothing more.


Fenris did not know how long he laid there in Hawke's garden, pummeled by the assault of memories, guilt, longing and confusion. He did not know either how he'd gone from the garden to Hawke's sitting room, but he did not question it. His eyes, dark green and turbulent, focused solely on the cup of steaming Antivan coffee in his hand. His shoulders were hunched and drawn in as though the comfort of the chair he was sitting in somehow offended him.

"Start at the beginning," Hawke instructed, her legs curling beneath her in her own chair, an identical cup of coffee held loosely between two hands. "I'm tired of these run arounds, these secrets, Fenris. If we are truly...friends, share them with me. Let me help you." She was determined to see things for what they were, despite the squeeze in her chest that stemmed from what she had witnessed in her garden. It had taken several long minutes of pacing in her darkened bedroom before she could bring herself to consider the situation from other angles. Three deep breaths and a steeled resolved later, she'd descended her stairs with the decision that she could, at the very least, be the friend that he probably needed right now.

He felt defeated, unwound and defenseless after everything that had conspired against him. His eyes slid shut, the corners of his mouth twitching into a reluctant frown. Hawke's words did nothing to ease the knot in his chest, the knot that tied all of his secrets together into one heavy lump. "They were - they are - the bravest people I have ever known," he began stiltedly, his voice lurching and stumbling into this unfamiliar territory. His eyes slid shut and he sighed, unwilling to travel any further into his tarnished past. "You have heard this story once before Hawke".

He could practically hear the gears turning in her head, could feel the wind of her racing thoughts as she leaped from one conversation they'd had to another, until her quiet gasp told him that she'd finally made the connection. His stomach burned.

"Oh, Fenris."

He bristled immediately, his face shuttering closed into an expressionless mask save for the disdaining sneer that tugged his lips. "Save your pity, Marian." He snapped harshly. The look of kindness on her face made his guts boil, he did not want her compassion, her understanding or her pity and still she did not recoil from him as he hoped she would. "Fenris, we can talk to them, we can make them understand..."

"Would you have words with the Darkspawn that killed Bethany?" he growled unkindly, rising to his feet and setting his untouched coffee on the mantle above the flickering fireplace. The blanched look on Hawke's face did nothing to guard against the disgust he felt for himself. "Would you understand?" His voice filled with spite and there was some small degree of pleasure to be had in watching her draw back from his hateful words. "Would you be willing to forgive that despicable murder simply because the ogre dances to the song of the Archdemon?" He was being cruel, he knew it, but he could not stop himself.

Hawke was on her feet in an instant, the coffee in her grasp lost to the floor with a clatter when her hands balled to angry fists at her sides. She strode forward until they were chest to chest, ignoring the dark pool of steaming liquid that was rapidly cooling on her floor. "That was different," she shot back stubbornly, recovering her composure and burying the hurt that his words had roused in her. "You're not some monster, Fenris."

His laugh was bitter and full of remorse, ringing in her ears as he backed away and turned to leave her estate. Outside, dawn had finally broken and the grey light of morning was filtering in through the windows. "There are some who would disagree with you, Marian."

He was conscious of the dirty footprints he tracked into her home and it felt to him a suitable metaphor for everything that was happening. Danarius and his machinations were unfailingly present in his life, cropping up in ways that left Fenris feeling hollow. The loss of the Fog Warriors had been a blow he was not sure he could survive, and now Hawke was being made to suffer its ramifications as well. Was there anything in his life that magic had not somehow ruined or twisted? It seemed as though each time he made his escape, he was reeled back in by forces beyond his control and the people around him suffered for it.

"Fenris," she called after him, not moving from where she stood. "I won't let them have you." It sounded childish even to her ears, but he looked so lost, so angry, that she sought to offer him anything, and had given voice to the first stupid thoughts that crossed her mind. She knew what it was to live always looking over your shoulder. Perhaps not as intensely as he, but she had been shaped by her years of fleeing first the Templars, and then her escape from both the Blight and her home in the much missed Ferelden.

She watched him pause on the threshold of the manor, his knuckles growing white from how tightly he gripped the doorframe. His head turned, but only slightly, only to allow him to look at her scornfully from the corner of his eye. "When the time comes, Hawke, I doubt there will be much you can do to stop them."