In the Lowtown streets, familiar packs of children roam, huddled under cloaks and coats and hiding under the threadbare canopies above the market stalls, or else tucked into the narrow gaps beside the steps leading to the poorer houses of the neighborhood. They speak in hushed whispers when they speak at all; more often, Anders spies them stealthily sliding their fingers into the pockets of unsuspecting passerby. A fair number of the City Guard patrol these streets, but these small and skinny children evade them with the practiced skill born of experience. The merchants guard their own wares far more closely than the Guard, and all but the most daring street thieves stay clear of them.

Anders wanders among them all, without apparent purpose. Old pinpricks of fear crawl up his spine, an impossible-to-shake sense of being watched. He tells himself he has no reason to be frightened. He is smart enough not to flamboyantly throw around magic in public places. The people who surround him like fish in a stream have no reason to suspect him as anything other than someone like them, one of the masses of nameless struggling poor. Yes, there are many now in this city who know the truth of what he is, but none have turned him over to the Gallows.

It's been long enough now that the refugees of Ferelden have, for the most part, assimilated into the community of the destitute and desperate within Darktown. Anders has been living among them for nearly two years, and the clinic he runs has saved enough lives that he has gained countless allies, willing to warn him of impending templar sweeps if not lie outright to protect him.

One of those allies, the young boy, Kai, catches Anders' eye from across the narrow alley. He smiles, and his teeth shine white in the evening shadows. Anders smiles back, unable to stop himself. Without thinking, he turns to a nearby seller and pays for a fragment of rock sugar. He slips it into the boy's hand. The kid tucks it into his pocket, no doubt thinking himself too old to be so easily bribed. Anders only shrugs, and sits down next to him. It's then that he notices the vials in the boy's hand; two of them, with small blue-white crystals barely visible through their shields of waxed paper.

Anders wraps his arms tightly around the boy's shoulder. He brushes the tangled mat of hair out of the child's eyes. "What do you think you're doing?" he growls.

The force of his own anger startles him, but Kai doesn't even blink. He shrugs Anders off and glares at him, with his fingers clenched into tight fists. Anders takes the scraps of street-processed lyrium from the boy and stuffs them into his pocket. He imagines he can feel something of the mineral's unnatural pull even through the smooth, thick glass. "This stuff is dangerous," he insists. More dangerous, maybe, than anyone here can know. Corrupted and mixed with Maker-knows-what, as though the raw detritus of magic on the physical plane weren't dangerous enough all on its own.

Kai scowls. "Do you think you're some kind of savior?" the boy mutters. "We don't need that down here. We've got the Chantry for that kind of thing."

At the mention of the Chantry, Anders almost loses control completely. He takes a long, careful breath through his nose, and forces himself to look at the boy. Just a child, doing the same as everyone around him. A child left all on his own.

"I'm nobody's savior," Anders snaps."Do what you want."

He isn't surprised in the slightest when Kai trots along behind him. Within moments, he's running ahead - toward Lirene's shop. Anders crosses the threshold just after the boy. He lays the vials of Haze onto the Fereldan woman's counter. She frowns when she sees them, and quickly hides them away, but says nothing.

Kai crumples beneath her gaze. He sits down on the edge of the bench, already occupied by a woman working at a quilt. Standing nearby is a cluster of men, able-bodied, but unable to find work all the same. Kai looks up, silently pleading with Lirene. Anders can feel the quiet anger radiating from the boy. His brother's been gone more often than not, disappearing into the streets or the mines he's too young to die in. He comes back, but it's no wonder Kai is feeling abandoned anyway, clinging to Anders and Lirene in an attempt to fill the gap.

"Might snow," Lirene comments, glancing quickly at the vials of lyrium and obviously pretending not to see them. Kai frowns at her, and shakes his head. "It snows sometimes, boy," she tells him.

Not more than a slight dusting, that Anders has ever seen. He looks out through Lirene's still cracked-open door, which rattles and slams as the cold wind buffets it. Only a bare sliver of moon is visible in the sky, and even that is soon swallowed by thick clouds.

Anders remembers the days when it snowed at the Tower, and he climbed up to the top of the library shelves to press himself against the window to stare as the blizzard winds whirled thick white flakes into the air. In those quiet winter mornings, the lake around Kinloch Hold would freeze, and blankets of snow half as tall as he was would pile up against the thick walls of the tower. The snow would stay, unspoiled by tracks or footprints except for those left by the occasional animal, sometimes for weeks. Those winter storms more than anything else reminded Anders how isolated they all were. That untouched ground served as the cruelest reminder that no one in the world wanted to touch the mages locked away on their island. It made it too easy to forget that there was an outside world at all.

Most of his ill-fated escape attempts took place in the autumn or winter; one had sent him out into a blizzard. He'd been caught within a day, dragged back to the tower, berated for being stupid enough to run out into such a brutal storm. The couple of templars that still spoke to him then honestly did seem curious when they asked: What was he thinking? Was he suicidal?

He hadn't answered, he never did.

"Might be bad," Anders whispers, turning back to Lirene. "If a storm comes."

She nods, and pushes Kai out the door, telling him to get on home. Anders, she lets stay. He wraps the still-unfinished quilt left behind by the refugee woman around his shoulders.

"I can't keep him out of the trade forever," she tells Anders, her voice that familiar mixture of pointed accusation and apology. "Not if the Coterie's got an eye on him."

Anders sighs, and scratches his eyebrow. "You knew the Hawk, when she was that age?" he asks carefully.

Lirene nods. "I did. She was just Callin, then."

Callin. Before she had a street name. When she was just a girl. He wonders if that's how she thinks of herself.

She's has been avoiding him, he thinks. Or maybe she's just disappeared into her alienage shelter. He isn't sure if he should be bothered by this; if there's anything to avoid. It's not like they're friends. He barely knows her. They run into one another every now and then, in the Hanged Man, or on the docks, and he hears her name more and more frequently in the clinic, as rumors of her activities on the streets swirl and grow. She's made significant inroads into Coterie territory, near single-handedly, if the whispers can be believed. She's cemented alliances with the dockmaster and the City Guard too. She's more a force of nature than a true person in these retellings. Somehow, that doesn't surprise him either.

"What can you tell me about her?"

A familiar smirk plays on Lirene's face. Anders rolls his eyes. "Don't give me that. She's just a kid." A kid in a lot of danger. And Lirene knows it too. She sighs and hops up onto the countertop. Anders has a pretty good idea how she must be feeling. Exhausted. And like nothing you do can ever be enough.

"She's a child of Kirkwall," comes the reply. "Like all the rest of 'em."

Anders frowns. The girl's dark hair and pale skin are equally common on both sides of the Waking Sea, he knows. But he wouldn't have pegged her as belonging to this city. Not by birth, anyway. "Refugee?" he asks softly.

"In a manner of speaking."

Anders nods. All apostates are refugees. She'd have moved about, if she were smart. Wouldn't she?

"She knows how to use her magic," Anders insists urgently. "She's trained. And more powerful than half the Circle apprentices her age." She hasn't sought him out. She insists she knows what she's doing when they do see each other. She says she's fine.

But a mage that strong will be a tempting target for threats from both sides of the Veil.

Lirene shrugs, as though it doesn't much matter. To her, it wouldn't. "Her father taught her what he could, 'fore he died."

Anders nearly chokes. His eyes sting. His head hurts and his stomach feels empty. "Her father?" he repeats. He stares up at Lirene with open, desperate confusion. Mages don't have families. Not ever.

"Girl was left orphaned when the templars finally caught up to him. Miracle she escaped them, really. Her uncle took her in, her an' her brother. He didn' turn her over to the Gallows, which is about the best I can say for him."

"She's got family?"

Lirene shrugs. "She's got me. And Athenril's gang."

"That's not a family," Anders growls.

He calls forth a few flickering sparks to light the couple of ragged candles Lirene has managed to make last. She blows out the one nearest her, and smiles at him weakly. Anders sits in the dim light, and kneads at the headache spreading quickly at the edges of his skull.

He blinks his eyes, but the fog of exhaustion only seems to settle more closely around him. He stares down, at the inside of his left arm, where a jagged scar marks him as Chantry-owned. He knows that some of the Circle's children were lucky enough to have someone be gentle when taking blood for a phylactery - Rhyanon had never had a scar like his. He'd been young still, alone and terrified, fighting hard, but not hard enough. The templars had cut him deep enough to really hurt, and he hadn't had the power or the knowledge yet to heal himself. Those skills had come to him quickly, within the first year, and the natural talent he'd shown made him rare. His skill at healing bought him his life, and doomed him, for the Chantry couldn't afford to lose someone so useful, and so dangerous. Maybe they would have sent him to cities just like this one: the slums of Amaranthine or Denerim, to heal the illnesses that prey on the helpless just as easily there. But probably not. They'd have kept him in the Chantry, for those who could afford the tithes, if they gave him any leash at all.

He cracks his knuckles and tells Lirene he's headed for the clinic. She nods. Her eyes are still deep wells filled with concern, but she won't stop him. She'll send people his way, even, when they don't have anywhere else to go. It unnerves him that so many other people come to him for help when he seems so incapable of even helping himself, but the fact that they do gives him the sense of purpose he so desperately needs. But his reserves of mana are wearing too thin. He's using too much, draining himself, not allowing himself enough time to rest or recover. How can he, when desperate mothers bring their starving, pain-stricken children to him, more and more?

He won't complain though. He's doing what he was put on this plane to do. The clustered hovels of Lowtown, and especially the open sewers of Darktown, spread disease as quickly as fire. Most of the children he sees, in the midst of the depths of winter's vicious plague, cannot hold down food even if there were enough to give them. He does what he can, but too many wait too long to ask for help. By the time they find him, all he can do is watch them die.

He scrubs at his dirt-caked skin with a rough cloth and a thin sliver of soap. He uses a kitchen bowl half full of water that is only dubiously clean. There are times - not many, obviously, but some - when he does miss the Tower. This is one of those times. He sighs with wistful longing when he pictures the rooms full of baths, tubs that could always be magically heated, no matter what the weather was like outside. He finishes washing as quickly as he can as dresses himself in the warmest clothes he can find.

Outside, the storm has come, as promised. It falls in heavy flakes; already it's beginning to gather in cracks at corners of his clinic, coming in under the door and through the gaps in the roof that he has not yet been able to patch or cover. Anders keeps a fire burning, fueling it with magic, trying to make his limited firewood last.

The snow barricades people into their ramshackle homes, to huddle around inadequate warmth. His worst suspicions are confirmed by those few brave enough to venture out to his clinic, banging weakly on the door, coughing and slipping on the ice. Anders opens the door and studies the children who watch him with wary eyes. Some shiver so violently that their whole bodies shake, others are sullen and silent, hiding in corners wrapped in as many layers as they can find. He can't help them, beyond providing a warm fire and a few distractions: flickering sparks shaped into dancing dragons. The children watch his magical tricks with dull eyes, and a few rare, shy smiles.

Anders works himself to exhaustion. Hours slip away, maybe days. The perpetual grey haze of midwinter makes it hard to judge the passage of time.

"That's dangerous, isn't it?" Lirene asks softly, and Anders whirls around, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing himself to calm his racing heart and quell the crackle of unformed power coiling around his fingers, waiting to be shaped and wielded.

"Of course it's dangerous!" he snaps at her, but the woman doesn't flinch. She should. Anders grabs a skin of wine and drinks it in long gulps, forcing himself to calm. "What're you doing here?" he spits. His voice is hard. The empty vial of lyrium still rests on the tips of his curled fingers; the drug buzzes under his skin, spiking mana like crashing waves through his body.

He pushes his way past the Fereldan shopkeeper and kneels next to a cot occupied by a young man who thrashes and kicks, moaning through a fever daze. He curls up tightly, clawing at his stomach. The boy is too weak to move; his skin is soaked with sweat, his blankets stained with the shit that runs, seemingly without end, from his bowels. The smell no longer bothers Anders - to tell the truth he barely notices, even with the lyrium enhancing his senses. He sees with a kind of tunnel-vision, a direct conduit of the life-force between himself and the people he buys his freedom by healing. He takes the boy's callus-roughened hands in his own, and he bows his head, closes his eyes, mumbles a few words.

From a distance, Lirene thinks, he looks like he might be praying.

She holds her breath as she watches him work, knowing, as she always has, that there isn't much to see. Anders' muscles tense, and he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. His breathing gets shallow and fast, his palms grow sweaty and slick.

Eventually, he opens his eyes again, and when Lirene meets that gaze it is dark and dull and exhausted. He shakes his head, and withdraws, hiding as well as he can behind a thin curtain.

Lirene returns to the boy on the bed. She sits with him as he is dying, carried off by the same virulent flu that has claimed half of Darktown as its life toll. There are those who claim that Kirkwall is a cursed city, fueled by blood and sacrifice. Lirene has never been one for ghost stories or fairy tales, but in these foul, choking winters, she can't see how they're wrong.

Anders stirs slightly when Lirene rests her hand on his shoulder. He flinches, and jerks to a sitting position. He still looks dazed though, and his eyes barely seem to focus.

Lirene's lips are drawn into a thin line, and she won't meet his eyes. "You did the best you could," she insists, with quiet force. "No one expects a miracle."

That only makes him more defensive. Of course that's what they expect. "Did he have…" Anders begins to ask. His voice is hoarse, and barely audible. His eyes flicker toward Lirene's, and she recognizes the desperation in them. He's just a boy, looking for approval. He needs help as much as any of them. It's too easy to forget that.

"No family," she assures him, softly. Of course, she doesn't know that for a fact. The Kirkwall streets collect children and mercenaries like driftwood washed up on a tide. This nameless boy is one of too many. And Anders still believes it was his duty to save him. He closes his eyes and sinks into a chair, exhausted and overwhelmed.

"We'll have to…"

Lirene takes his hand in hers, and massages it gently. It does nothing to quell the extreme tension in him, and his eyes are still closed. But she'd like to believe her closeness can help him. "I'm going to blow out the lantern," she says softly. "Anders, you need to rest."

He knows she's right, so he just gives her a listless nod. He doesn't want to let himself sleep though. The nightmares won't let him sleep. They're getting worse lately. He wakes up sometimes and it's hard to breathe, as he fights against walls that aren't there. The crumbling rock sewers of Darktown, its hovels and caves, pull at a part of him that he tries as hard as he can to bury. There are whispers in his mind, the kind that followed him in the Deep Roads, the kind that clawed at him through long months in a solitary cell in the forgotten basements of Kinloch Hold. He can't stay here, trapped inside. He struggles to push his door open, and stumbles through the drifts of blowing snow. The air bites at his skin, and he breathes it in. His lips are chapped and broken, and he shivers even through his layers of clothes. But it still feels better than not-sleeping in the dark, cramped spaces where he is chased by ghosts.