"Your mom told me again that she wishes you'd come see her more often."
"You talk to my mother?"
He flinches, and her heartbeat speeds up in her chest.
She still doesn't understand him sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - but the fact that he might be angry with her, or hurt because of something that she did... hurts. It feels wrong, it makes her feel guilty and confused. It makes her want to fix it.
"Not on purpose, or anything," he mutters. "It's not like I'm tattling on you. I just ran into her in the Lowtown market."
He still won't look at her, but he plays with her hair, combing his fingers through the tangles. She winces as he pulls at some of the more stubborn knots - even as a little kid, taking care of her hair was never high on her priority list.
"Your mother just wants to spend time with you," Anders says quietly. "She loves you. Don't throw that away. It's... it's an unbelievable gift."
"You love me too," she whispers back. And she realizes as she says it that it's not a question.
"Yes," he tells her.
A simple declaration that envelops the ridiculous swirl of complicated emotion and confusion that they stumble through.
But they stumble through it together.
She realizes she hasn't walked away or left him alone for a long time, that she feels a sense of... emptiness, when he's not with her for whatever reason. And that when she comes back to the clinic after these increasingly rarer times when she goes somewhere without him, he always pulls her close to him and holds her until his worry melts away.
And she appreciates it despite the fact that she tells him every time not to worry about her.
She circles her fingers around his wrist, to let him know that she understands what he's saying and she doesn't want to fight.
But her mother's spent a lifetime wishing for a perfect daughter that she'll never have.
"I'm not this person she wants me to be, this Kirkwall noble," she tells him bitterly. "I don't want to be that person. Did you know she wants me to get married? She's trying to find a suitable husband. What a blasted hypocrite!"
Anders tries to reassure her with a smile. "Nobody's talking about addressing wedding invitations yet. At least as far as I'm aware. It couldn't hurt to just check out the house a little, surely?"
She nods.
Because if he can follow her into the Deep Roads, with his help she can certainly handle a meal with her mother.
They access the estate through the basement tunnels that connect near his clinic, and she grins at him. "I'm sneaking into my own house. Is this wrong?"
She stumbles only a little bit over the words, but it's still clear to him that she doesn't feel like the house is hers, that there's a reason she feels more comfortable skittering around in the cellars and storage rooms than in the wide-open ballrooms and bedrooms upstairs, filled with expensive things.
He leads her up to the above-ground rooms where civilized people live, and they can pretend to be civilized people for a little while.
And as his footsteps echo on the heavy landings and wide stairways, he tries to imagine Melly living here.
He wonders if she was different, in this place, as a little girl. He tires to think of her as carefree, quick to laugh, able to run and play without worry.
He'd seen snatches of that girl in the Tower, especially in the beginning.
But by the end... fear took its toll. She was always serious, guarded. She kept her feelings locked under icy shields.
And he couldn't even blame her, because trust was dangerous and emotional attachments made you vulnerable.
She was the best friend he ever had, and what did he give her but someone else to worry about, something else to be afraid of?
He realizes as he explores the dusty, empty rooms of the sprawling estate just how little he knows about this family that people leave behind. Running from them, like Leandra, or pushed away, like Rhyanon.
Now, there's almost nothing left.
Melly had remembered far more than most of them in the Circle, especially given her young age - barely seven when she'd arrived at Kinloch Hold. But now Anders realizes that those memories he was so jealous of are only the tiniest of scraps. Fragments of color, sound, texture. They don't tell him anything about what the Amell family was really like. There's nothing in them to explain why Rhyanon Amell of Kirkwall ended up in Ferelden's Tower instead of this city's Gallows. Not that he's complaining about that!
She'd admitted to him once that she remembered her mother crying, fitting herself into the woman's arms trying to make her feel better. But she doesn't have any more of those pieces - she couldn't remember if it had anything to do with her, if it had happened just before the templars took her or much sooner. For all the memories she clung to, Melly had never had any idea whether her family even missed her when she was gone.
Leandra is little help in this regard. What she knows of the family and this city comes from before Rhyanon was even born. She knows nothing more about the Hero of Ferelden than what the stories say.
It's up to Anders to remember the little girl in the apprentice dorms, and the sarcastic teenager with a wicked bluff in poker.
And the young woman who forced herself to learn to heal even though it was never something that came easily to her. She pushed herself through long nights, exhausted and drained, working to figure it out, to help him.
Nothing he can do will ever be enough to pay her back. She saved his life more times than he wants to admit and he ran away from her rather than confront it. There's no word in any language to describe how much he owes her.
He runs his fingers over the painted symbol on a shield hanging up on the wall - the family crest. He wonders if she'd feel any connection here, or if she'd be just one more Amell glad enough to leave this place behind.
He watches Hawke, tromping slightly ahead, stopping here and there to explore the musty boxes that remain. She keeps casting sidelong glances back at him, but it's obvious that nothing pulls her forward except idle curiosity. Nothing clicks for her in this place either.
He remembers what Rhyanon had said to him, one night out in the rain outside Vigil's Keep - she will never feel safe within stone walls. The estate is huge, just like the one in Amaranthine, but the walls are thick and heavy, and they feel claustrophobic and confining. He knows Rhyanon could never feel at home here.
He wonders if Hawke ever will.
He wonders if he wants her to.