My apologies on the delay. Life is sometimes a whirlwind.

Thanks as ever to my patient beta and her wonderful red pen.

Mat, Declan, Temrys and Rowenna are mine, everyone else is BioWare's.

Why am I seething with this animosity?
I think you owe me a great big apology.

I really don't know what you mean.
Seems like salvation come only in our dreams.
I feel my hatred grow all the more extreme.

Anders was there, moving forward to Hawke in tandem with Declan drawing his raging sister back. Hawke's knees were weak from Rowenna' furious assault and she struggled to remain upright, supported by the ever faithful Varric. "Your nose and cheekbone are both broken," Anders explained wearily, his careful fingers examining the rapid swelling of Hawke's face. "I'll mend it for you this time but if you feel the need to repeat that performance you'll find that I won't be quite so amiable about it the second time."

Hawke said nothing, unable to meet Anders' eyes even as he summoned the very last of his mana to put her face right. How easily she'd managed to forget that these Fog Warriors had come to mean something dear to Anders. Shame burned hot in her healing face, though she felt no sympathy for Rowenna when the woman's nearly silent sobs began. Much of her still blamed the reckless woman for the terrible way the events of the day had unfolded, none the least of which was Fenris' capture.

Anders finished quickly and stepped away from Hawke, much further she noted than he would have in the past. It was with growing regret that Marian Hawke was realizing just how much she had truly lost his friendship. "She'll be fine, but sore," Anders was talking to Varric, seeming to have lost all interest in her continued existence in his clinic. "You all look tired, it's probably for the best if you two take her home and get some rest yourselves."

The dismissal in his voice, obvious as it was, sent a pang of annoyance through Hawke and she lifted unhappy eyes to his exhausted face. "What of Fenris?" she demanded quietly. "Are we to sleep and recoup and drink tea while he falls farther and farther into slavery?"

"Fenris can rot!" Anders exploded. "He is the least of my concerns right now!"

Hawke recoiled, staring at Anders and feeling quite suddenly as though he was a total stranger and not the man who had helped her so diligently in the past. "So a man who fights so fiercely to end slavery for some is so ready to throw another right into his shackles," she condemned, drawing to her full height and glaring at her once-friend. "You are a hypocrite and know nothing of true justice!"

Anders felt his face contort with rage that was not entirely his own. "Get out!" he bellowed. The tell-tale blue fissures cracking open across his face heralded Justice's coming.

Varric knew when enough was enough, even if everyone else apparently did not. With one hand clamped firmly around Hawke's slender wrist and a tired gesture for Merrill to follow him, he exited the clinic. He didn't have to drag Hawke, she followed at his side with no resistance and every desire to be as far from Rowenna and Anders as she could possibly be. No sooner had the door slammed shut behind them, did Rowenna's mournful howl shatter the deceptive silence. Her voice was broken, a wordless cry of pain that stabbed at Hawke, accusing and relentless.

"She sounds so sad," Merrill commented quietly, her large green eyes lingering on the closed door behind them.

"With good reason, Daisy," Varric replied. By the stone he was tired. "She lost a lot today."

"She brought it on herself," Hawke snapped in exasperation, finally reaching her wits' end. "Am I the only one to see her as the violent catalyst that she actually is and not some innocent victim caught up in something beyond her control?"

Merrill's eyes were disapproving again when they landed on her, but it was Varric who answered. "It may be her doing, Hawke. Hell, a lot of it is her own damn fault, but that doesn't mean she isn't entitled to some sympathy. She's in pain, she lost a brother today."

"A brother that came with her and the other two to kill Fenris, in case you've forgotten! Am I truly going mad?" Hawke shouted. "I certainly seem to be the only who remembers!"

"Is Fenris dead, Hawke?" Varric wasn't angry with his best friend. She was hurting too, in her way. He'd actually been expecting this conversation, though he did not think anyone could have predicted the circumstances in which it was now taking place. He'd merely expected to console her when Fenris, for reasons that were obvious at least to the Dwarf, was unable to return her affections. "No," he answered his own question when it became clear that Hawke would not. "He's not dead and if I've learned anything about those people that came to kill him, it's that they're very good at making things dead. If Fenris made it this far, I don't think they were planning on actually offing him anytime soon."

"They were tormenting him," Hawke groused. "That hardly counts as mercy, driving a man mad first before you kill him." She was beginning to grow very tired of discussing Rowenna and the Fog Warriors. Everything about them was chaos and madness, and those that ventured too close to their center – too close to Rowenna – were thrown into flux. Hawke could not understand what it was about the woman that drew people to her side and made them so fiercely loyal. She was not beautiful, she did not seem to be kind, and she was certainly not a gentle soul. In honesty, she seemed to be a raging, unstable, hateful thing. She moved like an animal and violence was endlessly clenched between her bared teeth. What was it about this woman, born to war, that made people fall behind her and champion her cause? It was not just Rowenna. Hawke had heard stories that the Hero of Ferelden, the last of the Couslands, had been much the same kind of woman and the King had fallen under her spell in much the same way Anders seemed to have fallen under Rowenna's. Lost in her thoughts, Hawke allowed Varric's arm at her elbow to guide her away from the clinic and toward the sun that awaited them in Hightown.

While Hawke could not piece together what exactly it was about Rowenna that inspired such fierce feelings, Anders' loyalty she understood - no matter how much his abandonment of her stung. Rowenna was almost oppressive in her fierce, unbending pride. She and her brother represented the unyielding iron sword of freedom and justice, or at least she knew that was how Anders saw them. She was confident that she saw them as they truly were, displaced warriors with more vengeance than common sense, and a sense of entitlement so enormous it was stifling. The more she thought of how foolishly everyone seemed to rally to their side, including the very man they were trying to kill, the less she truly understood it.

Templars rushed past them and Hawke, Merrill and Varric had the good sense to step out of their way. No doubt they were on their way to the now empty alley where the short but unforgiving melee had taken place. The Templars would find only carnage there, and it was unlikely that they had not felt the breaching of the veil and the illicit use of so much blood magic. It was one more thing for Meredith to use against the Circle of Kirkwall. One more thing for which Hawke felt she could aptly blame Rowenna. "They couldn't just leave well enough alone, could they?" she cursed quietly.

Varric's eyebrows rose with his piquing curiosity but he wisely allowed the Templars to put some distance between his group and theirs before speaking. "Just how much do you know about what's going on?" he rumbled, leading his companions up the moss and filth slicked stairs that would rid them of Darktown. He'd seen the look pass between Declan and Hawke out on the street. The man had implied Hawke didn't know everything, and in Varric's years of experience that meant that Hawke knew something. He fixed his best friend with his finest sympathy face. His stern face never worked on Hawke, but this one was as good as gold. "Hawke?" If he knew his best friend, he knew that she was tormenting herself with what ifs, could have beens, should have dones. What she needed was a good distraction, and what was a story, or a retelling of one as it were, if not the ultimate distraction?

"A bit," she relented. Lowtown was much easier to navigate than Darktown, and their pace was slowing as they moved into comfortable territory. She was hesitant to tell Fenris' story, especially one that shamed him so, without his consent. Still, maybe if Varric knew what she knew, he could help her make sense of the tangled mess she had found herself in. She was in over her head and she knew it, and Varric was always an expert at giving her a hand up and out. "Before Fenris found us, he found the Fog Warriors. He'd escaped from Danarius for the first time and they took him in." She remembered the bitter self-loathing in Fenris' voice the first time he'd shared this part of his past with her. "He stayed with them, they taught him about the Quanari. He told me they were the bravest people he knew. What were the words he used? They bowed to no master and fought for their freedom."

"Oh," Merrill breathed, "that sounds so heroic. Like something from a story."

Varric quietly agreed, filing the quote away to use in his story. It was a nearly perfect sentiment. "Something happened," Varric supplied. "The story doesn't end like that or they wouldn't be here."

Hawke nodded. "Danarius found him again eventually, and he ordered Fenris…" her voice cut out and her mouth curved down. "Her ordered Fenris to kill them all when they wouldn't let him be taken."

"And he did," Varric continued for her. Somehow, he had expected this.

"And he did," Hawke agreed. Beside her, Merrill gasped in quiet dismay and Varric patted her arm. "I don't know how Rowenna and the others survived. I don't think Fenris knows either. I also, before you ask, don't know anything about what's going on between him and Rowenna. He obviously didn't tell me everything." His incomplete trust left a bitter taste in her mouth, but she understood why he'd left it out. Whatever happened between the two was obviously deeply personal and Fenris just didn't do personal. "After he killed them, he fled and ended up here."

There was a pregnant silence and worry gnawed at Hawke. She needed their help if she was to rescue the elf. Telling them the truth had been a gamble though, and she hoped that she had not cost Fenris two more of his precious allies.

"Why did he do it?" Merrill fretted, wringing her hands in mournfully. "How could he kill the people who saved him?"

"I don't know," Hawke answered wearily, turning her face to the sky. She just wanted things how they had been before the Fog Warriors had disrupted their lives. "He said he felt as though he had no other choice."

The sun was still in the sky when they entered Hightown, a blazing reminder that it had only been a few hours in which everything transpired. It was a disconcerting feeling to know that events that changed your life took only hours. Hawke felt years older.

"We'll get Broody back," Varric reassured her. He meant it. Regardless of what he may have done, Fenris was still one of his people, and Varric was not fond of having any of his people kidnapped.

Hawke lingered at her door, smiling wanly at her two friends.

"Yes," Merrill agreed immediately. "Please try not to worry too much. We'll get him back and we'll all have a laugh about this whole thing!"

Hawke could only nod around the lump that formed suddenly in her throat, and her front door closed quietly behind her.

Rowenna's wordless cry raised goosebumps along Anders' skin and prickled at the nape of his neck, heralding Justice's retreat. Her grief was a tangible thing and he moved automatically to comfort her, only for Temrys to step into his path. "I would not," the force mage warned quietly, raising a hand to stop him.

"She's in pain," Anders argued. The look he shot Temrys was annoyed; he was bewildered and slightly hurt that his friend would bar him from Rowenna. "Just look at her."

Rowenna was unmoving. Head down with her arms hanging limp at her sides, she looked as lifeless as Mat save for the occasional tremor that wracked her athletic frame and the way her fingers flexed and relaxed over and over again.

"She is, and that is why you must not go to her." Temrys agreed, surprising Anders into not trying to move forward again. "She is in pain, yes, and she is also angry. More than that, right now she can be very dangerous. Look, even her brother has left her to herself."

It was true, Declan no longer restrained his sister. Once more, he stood at Mat's side, staring down at the still body of his best friend with a hard, unreadable expression on his normally merry face. His arms were folded across his chest, closing him off. His sorrow was private, but no less poignant than that of his sister.

"I don't understand," Anders voiced. For Declan to leave his sister alone with her grief was odd, an out of character move for the normally overprotective brother.

"She is quiet now but it is a lie of sorts. Does she seem right to you, in this moment? Her silence is ominous." Temrys explained patiently. He'd cared for the twins since they'd found him, had grown into the role of their keeper. He was their quiet guardian, and the warder of their secrets. He eyed Anders critically and Anders felt as though he was distinctly being weighed for worth by the man blocking his path.

Anders was a good man, Temrys decided, and his dedication to Rowenna and her brother had earned him some measure of the truth. "She has not healed from the first betrayal the way her brother has. For her, it is an open wound rubbed raw. This pain is the source of her strength. You have seen her fight. Do you understand?"

"She's a berserker," Anders guessed. He should have realized it before with the way she threw herself so wholly and enthusiastically into a fight. Oghren had been the same, overwhelming his enemies and only growing more ferocious with each wound he sustained. How often did he scold Rowenna for her recklessness? How often was he rewarded with that bloodthirsty grin and ordered to pipe down and get to mending her hurts?

Temrys nodded his confirmation but Anders still did not understand why he should refrain from reaching out to her. "That explains her lack of self-preservation in a fight, but not why I should just let her suffer. I've known berserkers, they're not mindless, Temrys."

"You have not known this berserker," Temrys corrected gently. "You have not truly seen beneath her thick skin. Perhaps I should have explained like this; someone will die for what has happened today, likely many someones. That someone was almost your friend Hawke, do you understand now? Rowenna was never taught restraint because she did not care to learn it. This suited her fine in a warzone, but not here. She does not know how to expend herself without violence. She has always been thus, but has worsened since the destruction of her village, and now she mourns not only all of her kin save her brother, but Mat as well."

Pieces of a previously incomplete puzzle fell into place and Anders looked back to Rowenna and Declan with renewed pity. He'd thought their unwillingness to share the complete story of their passed stemmed from a desire for privacy, not from something like this. "Their entire village is dead?" he questioned quietly, wondering, hoping that maybe he'd misunderstood.

Temrys nodded again, allowing Anders to reach his conclusions about the Fog Warriors himself. It was one thing to be told something, it was another to feel the full weight of revelation bearing down on one's shoulders. Temrys needed Anders to feel that weight, to truly understand.

Declan's shoulders stiffened as he caught their conversation. His eyes went blank, a look Anders was sure crossed his own face, the look of a man haunted by his past.

"Fenris killed them." Anders spoke with a heavy finality. It made too much sense, was the reason they pursued the escaped slave across the world. It was the basis of their blood oath, and their near tunnel vision where he was concerned.

"You've seen evidence of his failure," Temrys reminded him. "I can only guess how Rowenna and Declan survived. Perhaps he did not try his hardest to kill them."

Memories supplied Anders with the damning evidence to support Temrys' dark accusation. A thick scar marred the skin across Rowenna's midsection, long since healed and mirrored on her back; the entry and exit wounds of a nearly fatal sword thrust. Declan too, had a matching set of scars across the broad expanse of his chest. They had not explained where they'd acquired such terrible scars.

"Why tell me this?" Anders half demanded hopelessly. Rowenna was a half stable berserker who lacked control, and Fenris had murdered everyone in her village with the exception of herself and her brother, though it was not for lack of trying. He didn't know what to do with this information, didn't know what to say.

Temrys lapsed back into his characteristic silence, watching Anders a moment longer before moving away and joining Declan at Mat's side.

No longer barred from Rowenna, Anders went to her, trying frantically to calm both his own thoughts and those that stemmed from the spirit that raged inside him. Justice was enflamed at the revelation of the Fog Warrior's past. They fought for freedom and were rewarded with ignoble deaths. Anders himself watched her with a new understanding. His was a unique situation, but she came close to sharing it. She too, knew what it was like to lose control to a side of yourself, no matter how quickly or solidly you tried to grasp and quell it. Her view of the world was, perhaps, not too far off from his after all. Understanding tempered his pity with empathy.

Rowenna was still and Anders approached her cautiously, circling around so she'd have no choice but to look at him. "Ro," he murmured quietly. His hands settled lightly on her shoulders and he gave her a comforting squeeze. "Ro, we need to decide what to do with Mat's…with Mat."

Her head snapped up and she glared at him venomously, incensed that he would dare remind her of Mat's death. At her side, her hands curled to fists before she forced them to relax, Anders was not the source or the intended target of the rage that burned white hot in her head and she struggled to remind herself of that fact. "Burn the body," she growled. "No one can disturb him that way."

Behind her, Declan and Temrys made noises of agreement.

Pleased that he was at least getting a response and wasn't being mauled, Anders pressed his luck. "Rowenna, will you allow me to look at your back? The axe hit close to your spine, you might have some deeper damage."

"No," she snapped hatefully. "It's fine. I'm fine. Once more, I live while my kin do not."

The aggressive sneer that split her lips could not hide the note of despair that trembled in her voice and impulsively, Anders dragged her to him. Carefully, so as not to further pain the stitched wound across her back, he folded her in his arms and held her tightly to his chest. Even Justice, who normally disapproved of Anders' obsession with Rowenna, was silenced by the grim picture of her loss.

Rowenna made no move to rebuff or return Anders' embrace, her arms hung still at her side and her snarl did not disappear. Resting his chin on the crown of her head, Anders looked to her brother helplessly. Strangely, Declan was looking at him with something that was close to sympathy.

Declan was first to break the heavy silence that followed. "We'll take Mat down to the coast and then we'll leave for Tevinter. With luck, we can beat Danarius there."

Temrys agreed quietly but Rowenna gave no indication that she'd heard her brother.

"You're really going after Fenris then?" It wasn't really a question. Anders knew there was no way they would allow Fenris to escape them, especially not now that Mat's death lay at Danarius' feet. The only thing that would stop them would be their own deaths. Anders discovered that he was afraid for them. They had appeared to him as unkillable; rowdy and alive with the passion of their purpose. They couldn't simply die. Yet Mat lay just a few scant feet from him, his body already cooling.

"I wouldn't tell you no if you decided to come with us, Anders," Declan offered, his eyes already guarded against the refusal he expected. "We could use your help, not to mention…" he trailed off, gesturing to the eerily still woman Anders was still clutching against his chest.

Justice immediately sought to refuse, and to insist that theFog Warriors remain to assist him in his cause instead. Anders struggled, weighing his desire to stay and continue on his path with limited resources, against his desire to see Mat avenged, and his no longer avoidable desire for the woman in his arms.

"If I go," he began uncertainly, "you will come back with me to finish what we've started?"

Declan shared a long look with Temrys, but nodded. "We vow to return with you, and fight for the freedom of the mages at your side," he swore.

Internally, Anders was rationalizing with himself, with Justice. The Fog Warriors would be a permanent boon to his cause, and the things he could learn from a society ruled by free mages would be valuable. He did not deny to himself that Rowenna played a large role in his decision. "I'll go," he confirmed, ignoring the sudden thundering in his chest.

"Good." Declan heaved a relieved sigh. "You and Temrys can take…" his voice broke and a shadow passed across his face. "Take Mat to the coast and prepare the pyre. I need to take care of Rowenna before she kills someone if we're going to be going anywhere anytime soon."

Temrys nodded once and Anders reluctantly released Rowenna into the care of her brother. She didn't resist the movement, going where she was handled but the look in her eyes was positively murderous. "Is she going to be alright?"

Declan flashed him a lupine smile that did not reach his eyes. "You're wondering why she's being so weird and quiet, am I right? She's trying to keep from completely losing it. Something Mat tried to teach her, she's probably just counting to ten over and over in her head, or more likely, compiling a detailed list of all the things she's going to do to Danarius and Fenris." Declan eyed his sister with a troubled fondness, reaching out for her and offering the sword she'd forgotten. "I'm gonna take her and let her loose on the Tal'Vashoth. A little Quanri murder will set her right as rain. Kabethari, my ass."

'Kabethari. Caught between the Quanri and Tevinter, we paid for our freedom with blood, but it was ours.' Memories of an old conversation swam in Anders' ears. "What does that mean?" he asked quietly. "Rowenna said it before, too."

"It means," her brother responded, trailing off and nudging Rowenna. Her expression bloomed into a fiercely hateful mask, eyes blazing. Declan lifted a brow at his sister and nudged her again.

"It means," she growled, "they who must be taught."

"It was the Qunari's little pet name for us, for the Fog Warriors. Rowenna, in particular, always hated it. Of course, she hates everything, so that's not much of a stretch now is it?" Declan's jovial tone was a forced one. It was obvious to Anders that he was worried for Rowenna. It was an old worry, one that had Anders wondering just how often Declan struggled with it.

"C'mon Ro," her brother ordered, whacking her arm with one of his arrows. "Stop sulking like a big fat baby, we've got work to do."

Amazingly, Rowenna growled at her brother but rolled her eyes, and with blade in hand, followed him from the clinic.

Fenris knelt obediently on aching knees at Danarius' side, his eyes trained on the gilded deck beneath him. Every rock of the boat against the turbulent waves sent nausea lurching through his stomach. He hated the waves; hated how they carried him further from Rowenna and Hawke, further from the freedom he should have known would not last. He could never truly escape Danarius that much was apparent. He closed his eyes against the wave of bitter regret that threatened to swallow him and fought uselessly to harden his heart against his inescapable future. He had known and lost too much to slip back into his life as a slave. Companionable games of Wicked Grace, Hawke patiently teaching him to read and write, the easy offer of Rowenna and Declan's acceptance into their lives and the heat that Rowenna stirred in him had utterly ruined him for being anything other than a free man.

"She's likely dead, don't you think?" Danarius remarked idly as though he'd read Fenris' mind, a spindly hand settling in the elf's hair. It was a humiliating gesture, the same touch one would give a favored dog, and he could have been commenting on the weather for all the emotion in his voice. "That was quite the blow she took! Pity she's not around to enjoy your noble sacrifice."

It took all of the willpower that Fenris possessed not to recoil from Danarius' covetous touch, and his master's words forced him to revisit the painful way that Rowenna had lain so still and pale. Still, Rowenna had survived worse – he himself had done worse to her. She did not simply lay down and die as others might, and yet he wondered if it was better to believe that she was dead. If she was dead, he had no doubt that Declan would move mountains to find and destroy Danarius. If she lived, there was a very good chance they would seek him out once more. He did not know which was more toxic, the thought of her death or the immovable hope that bubbled in his lungs and made it difficult to breathe normally. "I would hope, were I you, that she lives. Her brother is not well known for his mercy." The defiant words spilled from his lips before he was even really aware of them, and he stiffened. Speaking back to Danarius rarely had pleasant results.

The magister only laughed, though his fingers tightened painfully in Fenris' hair. "My dear boy," he chuckled in a black humor. "That's what I have you for. Surely you can't fail to kill the man twice, can you? I trained you better than that." His grip on Fenris' hair was growing inexorably more punishing.

"Surely no," Fenris agreed hatefully, though his expression remained the placid mask that Danarius found most pleasing.

"That's a good boy," Danarius purred. The fire in Fenris' scalp relented as the magister eased his cruel grip but Fenris felt no relief. Would he fight Declan and Rowenna again at Danarius' behest? Could he try to kill them again because his master commanded it of him? No. He was surprised at the vehemence of his own thoughts. He would not. Never again would he raise a weapon against Rowenna and her brother.

There was a strength to be found in this realization, though he only half understood what sort of strength it truly was.