The quiet murmur of voices crept into Siobhan's senses, and when she opened her eyes, the blurry world took too long to focus. She tried to move, but nausea rose in her stomach and pain throbbed up her neck and her head. She groaned and dropped back down, closing her eyes.

"Jacobah, I think she's awake."

Hawke rolled her head towards the sound of footsteps on wood. She was lying on a thin matt of straw on the floor.

"He didn't think you were going to open your eyes," the young woman said as she sunk to Hawke's side. The woman put a hand on her chest. "You were very badly hurt."

"Where am I?" Siobhan whispered through thick lips. When she tried to sit up again, the woman pressed her back down.

"Don't move," the woman said and rose to pour something into a wooden cup. She tucked her strawberry blond hair behind her ear.

"The city," Jacobah said. He leant against the hearth, standing with his arms crossed.

"City?"

"Cumberland," the woman said as she sat on the ground and took Hawke's hand, wrapping it around the cup. She reached to lift Hawke's head. "I'm Elisa, this is Jacobah. Our father brought you here, he found you on the road back to the city. Drink."

Siobhan tried to move again, and Elisa held her head as the dizziness threatened to overtake her again. She closed her eyes and drank it all. It was bitter and left a coolness in her mouth. When she made to speak again, her words slurred together. She knew the sensation – Anders had given her something like it once.

"Just rest," Elisa said, her voice cutting through the haze. Her voice progressively sounded more like his. "It will keep you awake, but you shouldn't move. You're lucky to be alive, with what happened."

"I… don wannnt…" Hawke's lips were fat and numbed in her mouth, as heavy as her limbs and senses.

"You always had the luck, you know," Anders said. His voice grew softer. "I just wanted to live like you. To have normal lives. We all did."

Siobhan tried to turn her head, she could see his blond hair in her periphery. He was hovering over her, lingering nearby. Her chest tightened, trapped in lethargy, and a soft groan squeaked out.

I made you a martyr instead, Siobhan thought as her lips failed her. The world softened further, almost like seeing while you slept, and the voices in the room dipped beyond her recognition.

The slam of a door jarred her senses back into some semblance of reality some time later, and Hawke stirred awake.

"There was a slaughter in the market," an older man said, his voice trembling. "Mages and templars from the Circle, they were together … it all happened so fast."

"What?" Elisa rose and put her stitching down. She paled and hurried to him. "Father, you're bleeding!"

"No, no," he said and shook her hand off. "It's not mine. My stall was hit, and Frederick was badly hurt. Where's your brother - you have to come, we'll lose everything!"

"But what about her?" Elisa asked.

"She is not your kin," her father snapped and grabbed her arm. "Get your basket, others need you more."

"We'll be back soon," Elisa said as she hurried around the small room. She knelt by Hawke and touched her forehead. "You'll be safe here. Just rest."

Siobhan wasn't able to gauge the time properly as she laid in the semi-dark, her head gradually clearing from the drink she'd been given. When she finally sat up, she groaned and tentatively touched the back of her head. There were rough stitches over a scabbed gash, and it was hot to the touch.

"Stay in bed, plum," came a soft rumble of a voice. "No more running."

Hawke's jaw tightened, and she cautiously pulled up to her feet. The nausea seemed to be gone, but her head still throbbed. She steadied a hand on the wall and tugged down the nightgown she was garbed in. The wall reminded her of the scrubby plaster that she'd lived in those first years in Kirkwall. She could almost hear mother and Gamlen fighting. Then she spotted her armour nearby.

Running through the bushes, Siobhan finally stopped and collapsed at the base of a beech tree, covering her face and wiping away her tears. She wrapped her spindly arms around her legs and leaned against the bark, hiding her face against her knees as she stifled the sounds of her sniffling and gupped breath.

Siobhan looked up through the trees. The few clouds in the night sky were illuminated by the three-quarter moon and magnified its glow. Still, her eyes had trouble focusing on the leaves. They shuddered in a light southern breeze, but it was only movement, not specifics. Though maybe it was her teary eyes that blurred it too. Her head twitched when she heard the snap of a twig. Then she saw him.

"How do you do it?" Siobhan asked, her voice thick and nasally. "How do you always find me?"

"Oh, I have my ways," Malcolm Hawke replied and pushed a low branch on the tree aside so he could duck down. "You're getting faster, you know."

"Anyone can run fast," Siobhan said and wrapped her legs around her knees again.

Malcolm exhaled as he sat down beside her. He moved the small sword that hung from her waist to make room for himself at her side. "It worries your mother when you do this, you know."

Siobhan's expression soured, hidden by her arms as she stared down through her knees. "But not you."

"Of course I worry, plum," Malcom said, and he wrapped his arm around her. "Even if I think you are growing more and more capable of looking after yourself, you're still a my little girl."

"Just a boring normal child," Siobhan said into her arms.

"Hardly," he scoffed. "How many of your friends have travelled across the country? How many of them have an enchanted sword?"

"But they could travel – they could just buy a sword," Siobhan replied, lifting her head without looking at him. "Not like Bethany."

"No," Malcolm quietly said. He ran his hand up his daughter's back, drawing her into his arm and kissing her brow. "No, you get to live the normal life we will never have. She needs you, Sio. I need you to always look out for her. She isn't as strong as you are."

Siobhan let herself be drawn in against him, hugging her arms close to her body.

"No more running," Malcolm whispered to her, running his hand over her dark hair.

"Then why are we leaving again?"

"Because we run together," he replied, and kissed her brow again before picking her up.

"Happy? We came right to the docks," Varric grumbled, crossing his arms. "My feet are blistered and numb, thanks for asking."

"The city is huge," Aveline murmured. She blinked lengthily before saying, "I don't even know where to begin, Fenris."

"Wait here then," he replied, scanning the dockside street. "I'll find the harbourmaster."

"I'll wait there, thanks," Varric waved at a nearby stone wall, and crept off to sit down as Fenris turned away.

The air smelt of salt, tar and sweat, and the open docks were bustling with sailors and dockworkers. Further up shore, cargo ships entered isolated wharfs, but here, smaller vessels and fishermen traversed with organized chaos. Fenris kept his head down and listened to their conversations as he lost his way along the waterfront. When his frustration had grown to breaking, he forced himself to snag the attention of an elf running along the planks.

"The harbourmaster's shack," Fenris said, letting go of the man's arm.

The elf did a double take before pointing nearby and taking off once more.

Making it down the rocky quay, Fenris was about to knock on the door when it opened and a rotund man with a fuzzy black beard came out. They stopped in each other in their tracks.

"What?" The man tucked a wide ledger under his arm. "Shouldn't you be working?"

Fenris narrowed his eyes but merely said, "Kont-arr. When does the next ship depart?"

The harbourmaster sighed before his deep voice boomed, "The sodding thing should have already left. It's not still there, is it? Damned captains, think the only time in the world worth anything is their own..."

"What berth?"

"Nine," the man grumbled, before pushing past to go snag a young boy waiting nearby.

"Are you certain?"

"Did you not hear me the first time, knife-ear?" The harbourmaster scarce looked at him as he took a few coin from the boy and sent him off again.

Fenris grit his teeth and spun away towards the secluded wharfs, speeding up to jog amidst the crates, sailors and filth along the wall. His heart thudded and blurred his senses, and his thoughts harkened back to the first moment he had found her things absent – when he had read her letter. When he realized she was gone. He had ignored it across the miles, swallowing away the honest truth of her flight.

When he stepped into the ninth berth, the feeling dropped out of his stomach, and Fenris stood numbly at the edge of the empty water. He took a few steps towards the pier, half-tripping over the chain mooring in his way. The wind was blowing in and filling the space with the cries of wheeling gulls and the humid cold of the ocean. His expression crumpled, and Fenris dropped his chin as he trembled from something more than the cold.

Amidst the calls and clanks of loading from the adjacent berth, the soft sound of a woman singing wove through, and Fenris' drooped further. It was something to hold onto as the pain spread like a poison through his limbs, and he took a deep breath as he listened further. He stepped after it onto the dock.

"Siobhan," Fenris whispered. When the singing continued, he lifted his head and picked his steps along the pier. There was someone sitting along the wall at the end. "Siobhan?"

The figure hunched forward, and Hawke's sickly features came into relief as she turned her head. She didn't look at him, but dropped her gaze and quietly said, "Oh."

Fenris made a sound of disbelief and said, "It's you. You're here."

"Yes," she replied, looking back at the water. "I missed the boat."

"You left us all. You abandoned Kirkwall," Fenris said, his voice trembling. "I thought you were gone, I thought I'd lost you."

"I thought if anyone, you would understand the need to run. The need to get away," Siobhan said, pulling the cloak on her back more tightly around herself. "I couldn't be trapped there anymore, Fenris, living the life everyone else needed – that everyone else wanted." Her voice hardened, although it grew smaller. "I did this for me. I wanted to think of me for a change."

"And what about me?"

"You walked out on me!" Hawke replied with equal fire. "Without even listening!"

"I know… it was wrong of me." Fenris took the last few steps to her side. "When I learnt of what Sebastian had done… I assumed the worst. Through it all. And you deserve better than that." Swallowing the thickness in his throat, he added, "I am sorry."

Siobhan's shoulders shook slightly, and she said, "Did you come all this way just to apologize?"

"I came all this way because I love you – and I never want to be apart from you!" Fenris gestured with a hand and said, "I'm not going to let you go destroy yourself by converting to the Qun!"

"It isn't your choice to make," Hawke said as she stood up, running a hand over her eyes.

Fenris grabbed her by the arms as she stood, and it forced her eyes up to his. "Yes it is. You made me belief I am worth something, Sio. And I need you in my life, something it won't allow."

Hawke closed her eyes, the wrinkles of age showing about her eyes and across her forehead.

Loosening his grip, Fenris pushed her dark hair back from her forehead and more quietly said, "Are all our times worth nothing? To never pick up a sword again, to never spar again - tell me you do not want me, that you do not love me, and I will go. I will leave you to find the Qun."

When more tears spilled down Hawke's cheeks, Fenris smeared his palm over them and whispered, "I cannot promise I'll make it better... But I will try with all my being to make it less worse. I want you - I want our path together, walking the same road."

"I am so tired, my wolf," Hawke whispered, and she trembled as Fenris enveloped her in his arms. Her fingers traced the neckline of his clothing and up the brand along his neck. "So tired of choosing my path, of doing what is right. My sword is so heavy, can I not merely be led where I should go?"

"Then let me lead you," Fenris whispered and breathed into her hair. When she pressed her lips into the curve of his neck, he looked skyward. "You saved me from myself. Let me do the same. We will face the road together."

THE END

A/N: Hope you enjoyed the Invocation, it was a fun challenge for me to write it. I wanted to see the other side of the conflict in DA2. I realize some readers have been rather upset by this plot line, but to me that meant I was doing something right. If a story incites emotion, good or bad, then I'd like to imagine it's being told well heh. Thanks for reading!