When Hawke awoke in the pit, something was chewing on her leg.

She registered it dully, without surprise. The pain seemed very disconnected from her at first, until suddenly it wasn't and everything jumped into sharp focus.

Utter darkness surrounded her. Jagged rocks battered her face and hands, and a crunching sound accompanied the pain in her right leg.

Hawke screamed and kicked out with all of her strength, connecting successfully with her attacker. She scrambled at the pebbled floor and tried to pull herself out from under the thing. Her left arm was no good; the right couldn't get a grip on anything solid.

Something grabbed her ankle and squeezed hard, pulling her back.

Desperately her good arm fumbled at her waist and came up with the dagger still sheathed there. She jammed it into the thing clamped to her ankle and stabbed again and again.

Something hit her sharply, followed by a second impact as she crashed into something large and solid. Then there was nothing.

She might have blacked out.

She became aware of a rustling noise nearby, and remembered the thing she had stabbed. Whatever it was flopped awkwardly, hopefully in its death throes. In case it decided to chew on her again, Hawke clutched the knife and elbowed herself along the floor. At the source of the movement she stabbed again and again, all along the bulk of its body, until everything was still and quiet.

Slowly, she sat up and assessed the damage.

Okay. Okay. It wasn't so bad. She was wearing armor. The bites to her leg hadn't gotten through the armored plate - battered it pretty badly and she was going to have a hell of a bruise, but no chunks were missing out of the leg, at least.

She felt around to examine the dead thing that had tried to eat her, and her hand encountered scales. A lizard, big, with wings. A drake. Hadn't she seen one of those recently?

Shit. Her head hurt. She just wanted to lie down again and sleep some more.

Why was it so dark?

Blindly, she traced the walls around her. There was a ceiling above her low enough that she would not be able to stand. If she could stand.

It was some kind of warren. Where the drake lived, presumably. It was dragging her home to eat her. Must have got impatient on the way. Lucky for her.

She seemed to remember fighting some of these things, somewhere with more light. A cave. The Bone Pit! And then she was falling...

Ugh. She'd been in the mines a million times; there was never a hole in the floor there before. Where the hell was she now?

She needed to get somewhere with light. Fumbling around in the dark was bad.

Her left arm was numb. It was still there, she confirmed with her other hand, but useless. As well, much of her face was numb, when she felt at it. It felt puffy. She was still wearing her helmet, thank goodness. It had probably saved her life.

Hawke picked a direction and started crawling. Hopefully this was leading her back in the direction she had come from, rather than deeper into the drake's lair.

It was slow going with only one good arm. Her iron plate dragged along the rocks and made an incredible racket, but the narrow tunnel dampened it somewhat.

Anders, Merrill, Fenris and Varric. They were with her. Where were they now? Had they been dragged off too? Or was she alone? She had a glimpse of Fenris's horror-struck face just as she went over the edge. So at least somebody knew where she was, assuming he hadn't gone over as well.

Then she had fallen. It seemed to go on for a long time before the world exploded in pain. This was no small shaft. She could be deep underground.

Crawling on hands and knees, Hawke progressed through the tunnel, until her hand encountered empty air in front of her. The ground just... stopped.

She felt all around. Before her was a large empty space. The ground jutted out into into it for maybe a few feet, providing just enough of a ledge for her to have landed on, hours ago. Above her she could see a tiny, flickering pinprick of light.

Hawke eased herself into a sitting position. For awhile she sat and contemplated the pinprick of light, already exhausted from her exertions so far. There was light up above. It was a long way away, but if she could see it, it was reachable.

With any luck, her friends would be able to find her.

Things got fuzzy for awhile.

Hard to tell how much time passed, sitting in the dark. It could have been hours, or days, or minutes.

As she often did when stranded somewhere unpleasant, Hawke thought about her home and her bed, and her little household there. Orana was probably preparing a meal or fussing over her garden, and Bodhan would be off to market to restock the larder. Sandal would be wandering about, creating little disasters for Bodhan to rescue him from. And Anders would be in the clinic, as he always was these days.

Maybe today he wasn't. Maybe he was looking for her right now. She'd like to think he was. Hawke had a sudden vision of being reunited with her tearful lover, and everything going back to the way it used to be, years ago, when they were deliriously happy together.

Fat chance, that. But she indulged herself a little. Anders all to herself. No clinic, no manifestos. No quests. Just the two of them. Anders the way he used to be, when he had emotions other than anger. When he seemed to enjoy her companionship and they could speak of things other than mages and templars, and stay in bed for days on end.

It was selfish of her. She knew that. So she never asked it of him. But she ached for it, regardless.

At some point, she took a lazy inventory of everything she had in her possession. Her dagger had already come in handy. A little bit of poison for her weapon. She had some healing poultices and salves that she'd forgotten about. She also had some rations tucked away, and a flask of water.

Without thinking, she used everything up. She didn't mean to, but everything hurt and she was just stuck sitting here alone, might as well do something while she waited for aid. After a few poultices, her head stopped aching quite so much, and she was starting to feel pins-and-needles in her arm. Then she took out the food and water.

When she ate them, and her head cleared a little bit, she realized that no one was coming.

How could they? It was a long way down, and there was no light. This was no natural cliff, who knew if it was even climbable? They had no way of knowing where she was and how badly she was hurt. Even if they tried to come for her, it was unlikely they would find her way down here.

Damn. If only she had convinced Flemeth to teach her that turning-into-a-dragon trick. That would have come in extremely handy right about now.

There weren't many courses of action to choose from. She couldn't just sit here forever. For one thing, there could be more hungry drakes around, and getting eaten was one of the more unpleasant ways to die. So that left two things: up or down. Down could lead somewhere, she supposed - some other tunnel, perhaps - but in all likelihood down was death. Either slow, by getting stuck and starving to death, or fast, via gravity.

Up it was.

Climbing in the dark was going to be tricky, if not impossible.

She could do impossible. Had done it already, a couple times.

And whenever there was a choice between waiting around for potential death, and running towards it, Hawke was inclined to run.

So she pulled herself up to her feet and started feeling around the walls for something to grab onto. Merrill had taught her a little bit about climbing, over on Sundermount.

- All those times up and down the mountain, and never once had she fallen! And then the ground in her own damn mine opens and swallows her whole! Of all the things to happen -

There, she jammed her foot into a crack in the wall and pulled herself up the first length. Balancing on the toe of her boot, she could reach up and grab a jagged rock above her, and fumble with her other foot for another toehold.

A little at a time, that would do it. Just don't rush. There will be more tunnels in the sides, she could go from one to another and rest. No problem. She could do this.

Her progress was slow. Excruciatingly slow, especially for someone as impatient as Sadie. Blindly, she had to grope for a handhold, never knowing if there would even be a suitable one or if she would have to back down and try another direction. Finding one, she needed to remember from a few moves back where to jam her boot into for her next foothold, before pulling herself up another foot or so.

And then, do it again. And again. And again.

It was hard to say how much progress she was making in the pitch blackness. Some time went by, enough to leave Hawke sweaty and panting. By luck she found a spot wide enough to sit on and perched there for a time, catching her breath, wiping the sweat out of her eyes. She should have rested longer, but she was eager to move up the long wall and into the light - a tiny glimpse of light which, discouragingly, had grown no larger for all her efforts.

Still, it seemed easy enough. Through steady effort she would reach her goal. Perhaps be home in time for supper. And if nobody was waiting for her at the top, she would be well justified in dragging them out of their beds and putting a good scare into them for their failure to rescue her, not that she needed their help at all after all thank you very much.

Such thoughts as these crowded out her sense of caution, and as she rushed through her next few grips, disaster struck.

She was climbing again, already moving into her next foothold before her current one was quite stable. Rock crumbled beneath her right foot, catching her utterly by surprise, and she started sliding down. She clutched uselessly at the cliffside, to no avail. Her grip on the wall slipped under the weight of her armor, and she slid faster, slamming into the flat rock that had served as her last resting point.

"Oof." Dazed, Hawke hung halfway off into empty space, waving her arms to try to right herself. But things were about to get worse: the sound of rockfall and clanging metal summoned a scurrying sound from within the wall that made Sadie's stomach drop.

A dragonling was on her almost immediately, and she hurled it over her shoulder with an angry cry. A long screech tracked its fall into the darkness.

Another was approaching, and Hawke had to decide between righting herself and drawing her knife. She chose the knife, foolishly as it turned out. Unable to see, she ended up stabbing into empty space, until the thing slipped up and bit her on her knife arm.

Hawke screeched in pain and frustration. "Somebody help me!"

Her desperate words rebounded in the narrow pass, and she immediately knew she had made a terrible mistake.

Her cry only summoned more of the things, which now swarmed from all directions and climbed onto her, tearing and scratching, until overweighted by their bulk Hawke pitched backwards into empty air.

It could only have been a few seconds of falling, but it felt like an eternity.

She landed on her back with a searing burst of pain in her left shoulder. Happily, she also landed directly atop several of the dragonlings, the impact killing them instantly.

Panicking, she flailed all of her limbs to shake off the tiny dragonkin still clinging to her. With bare hands she tore at their flesh and flung them away from her. Her fingers found her knife thankfully lying nearby and slashed away, until everything was still once again and her ragged breathing was the only sound.

Still alive, you lucky bastard she told herself, before she passed out.

She would realize, when she awoke, that she had fallen all the way back to where she started.

Hawke dreamed. In the dream, she sat beside a roaring fire in the sitting room of the manor where Fenris lived. The elf himself sat in front of her. He was trying to tell her something important. But she couldn't understand what he was saying; she didn't know these words. She shrugged at him helplessly, and he looked sad and frustrated.

Even so, there was a sense of relief in this dream, a feeling that all was well. Here in this place that had become a refuge for her from the wreckage of her life, with one of her few friends that was better off now than before she made their acquaintance, Hawke felt more at peace than anywhere else in the world. She did not worry that she couldn't understand what Fenris was trying to tell her. In time they would understand each other fully.

Hawke awoke in the dark and tried to hang onto the warmth of her dream. But it couldn't last in this place, and soon again she was cold and alone.