Hawke sat cross legged on a pew, her staff laid flat across her lap. The hour was late and the church filled with inky darkness.

Aerith paced around the flower patch, repeatedly undoing and redoing her braid. Shafts of green and white light from a nearby liquor shop drifted through the frosted windows and illuminated the flowers. The dust in the air danced in the light, kicked up by Aerith's boots.

"Where is he?" she muttered, snapping the band back onto her braid for the third time. "Wasn't he meant to be here already?"

Hawke waved away the question. Genesis would arrive when he was good and ready and the coast clear, there was no point stressing. She was more concerned with the ritual itself.

Aerith had shown it to her in the Fade, the strange healing spell. She hadn't seen its results in the real world but old scars on Aerith's hands were gone, that was proof of something very powerful. Most healers couldn't affect scars. They were stubborn and undoing them ran counter to a body's own healing instincts.

Aerith had been proud and confident in the Fade.

"Feeling good about it?" Hawke asked.

Aerith swallowed her nervous energy. "Feeling like a spy, I like all this sneaking around."

"We need code names. You can be... Panacea."

She posed in a shaft of light, tossing her braid back dramatically.

"And I'm Vengeance."

"What!" She dropped her pose and put her hands on her hips. "How come you get to be Vengeance? I want to be Vengeance!"

"Sorry, no swapping code names. That's just how it is, I don't make the rules."

"You literally just made up the rules."

"My hands are tied," Hawke said with a forlorn sigh.

"What's Genesis' name?"

She hummed. "Wrath."

"Are you kidding me?" Aerith threw her hands up. "Panacea. Ugh."

Hawke laughed.

The backdoor creaked. Both women paused and looked over. It was fully dark in that corner, except for two glowing points of light, that resolved into a SOLDIER's eyes.

Genesis emerged from the darkness. His eyes were fixed to the flower patch and Aerith, nearly glowing in the surreal neon light. White flowers and green leaves bobbed in a draught, their little shadows dancing around them. The Veil had always been thin here, and had only grown thinner with their months of magic training. It had been so long since Hawke really bothered to look, she had forgotten how ethereal it was.

"This is a hallowed place," he said, breathless.

Aerith stood straight. "It is."

He drew nearer and Hawke rose from her seat.

The plan was simple. Aerith would enter the Fade, cast the spell with Innovation's aid, and then they would test the resulting healing water. Genesis looked at Aerith with such hope. She let out a single shaky breath then lifted her chin with confidence. Hawke didn't have the courage to voice her doubts.

Aerith laid herself down on the edge of the flower patch, her hands clasped over her midriff. Her breath evened out shortly after as she entered the Fade.

Genesis stood before the flowers, looking across them up to the altar, while Hawke did a control test on him. One hand on his side and the other on his chest over his heart, she let questing magic sink into him. She wasn't healing, just poking around to see what they were working with. His skin was warm and his pulse steady, carrying the hum of the taint through his veins. She could feel its progress leaching through him, taking root in his lungs, his liver, and heart. It festered in a knee injury and a strained muscle in his back.

"Do you think she can really do it?" he asked, his voice a soft whisper.

Hawke didn't look up from her hands on him. "She's confident. The spell itself is… something."

He nodded with a frown and she stepped back. She'd hoped for a miracle cure for years as her father wasted away, wasting money they didn't have on useless remedies. He died all the same.

She shrugged at the accusation he didn't make. "I suppose the proof is in the pudding."

"You have the strangest idioms."

She shrugged again. They stood in watchful silence.

"I'm going to pray," he said. "Perhaps Minerva will smile upon us."

She returned to the pews, giving him some privacy.

Maybe she ought to entreat the Maker. She glanced back at the flower patch. Genesis was on his knees, his face upturned in the light. Would it be blasphemous, here in a garden dedicated to a divine planet? It was probably better not to draw the Maker's attention really, what if He remembered all that other stuff she did?

What were the chances sacrificing herself to save the Inquisitor had gotten her posthumously un-excommunicated?

She shook her head and abandoned that train of thought.

In time Genesis rose and joined her on the first pews. Aerith slept on peacefully. The veil pulled very slightly, giving Hawke a mild headache. She relocated to the floor, stretching her arms out behind her and letting her head roll back.

"It is only her first attempt," Genesis said suddenly. "It isn't necessarily a failure if it doesn't work straight away."

"Hm."

"What?"

"Nothing." She looked up at the murky rafters. "I hope it works."

"...I should hope you do."

"Hm."

He looked at her with narrowed eyes. She felt like a mouse in a field spotted by an eagle.

"What's the problem, Hawke?"

"There's no problem," she said, leaning forward and crossing her arms. She pulled her knees up.

"You haven't made a single bad joke since I got here."

"That's because I never tell bad jokes. I'm a comic genius."

He raised an eyebrow.

She blew out a frustrated breath and scratched her scalp with her gauntlet. "There may be a chance of finding a cure here. After two known cases over, what, a year?"

"A year and two months."

"Right. It's been a thousand years, five wars, and millions of dead on Thedas, and we haven't even come close to a cure."

He frowned. "I can't do anything about that."

"Neither can I. Neither can anyone." She leaned her crossed arms on the spiked armouring on her knees, and her chin on her arms. "You can't blame me for being a little bitter."

"Yes, I can," he snapped. "I don't care about the statistics, I want to live."

"And I don't begrudge you that. But Angeal is like a brother to you, yes?"

"Yes."

"Well, Carver is my brother." She waved a hand at Aerith's sleeping form. "Say she does it. Say she makes the perfect cure with instant restoration and no side effects and you get everything you ever wanted. Carver still dies alone in a cave somewhere."

He started to reply but she barreled on.

"If we find a cure but I can't get back to Thedas, the sixth and seventh Blights will still happen. The taint will spread, the last Dwarven Taigs will fall, more lands will turn fallow, rivers poisoned, species extinct, and every day the darkspawn grow in number until sooner or later… there won't be a Thedas anymore." She bowed her head. Her voice dropped. "I want you to recover, I do, from the bottom of my heart. But as long as I can't go home…"

Thick silence followed her tirade. She felt hollow at the sensation of looming failure, at the death and destruction that trailed her no matter what she did. She wished she hadn't said anything. It had been bearable before she put it into words.

"We'll find a way back," Genesis offered. "Once we've got the cure."

She looked up at him in the dark. She couldn't make out his expression in the hard shadows.

She sighed and dragged a hand down her face.

"If I showed up now with a cure for the Blight, it might just be enough to make them happy to see me again," she said, making a sardonic play for levity.

"I'm sure you're missed."

She snorted. "Surety is born of ignorance."

"You don't have anyone waiting for you?" he pressed.

"Waiting with dread, I imagine." She stretched back out again, hiding in her practiced irreverence. "They're probably popping the good champagne and praying to Andraste that it'll last."

"Why are you trying so hard to return to a people who don't want you?"

"Don't worry, the novelty will wear off soon enough." She gave him a knowing look. "Thedas, too, once thought I was useful."

He cocked his head. "You think that's all I see in you?"

"And my stunning good looks, of course."

"Is it all you see in me?" he asked, his voice suspiciously light. "Convenience and something pretty to look at?"

"Of course not." She let her head fall back. "You're also rich."

"And generous," he drawled, "here I am gracing you with my presence."

"Thank you ever so much, messere, the other peasants will never believe me."

He scoffed.

The Veil stretched uncomfortably. Hawke looked to Aerith and Genesis stood. It felt profoundly wrong, like someone tugging on her stomach lining. Aerith rolled over. They waited in tense silence, but nothing else happened.

Genesis sighed and grudgingly sat again.

The vigil stretched on. Outside a car alarm went off and one of the neon lights flickered and died. Still they waited together in the quiet church.

"I've been thinking," Genesis began, halting. "If there was ever any mention of Thedas in Shinra's territory, the recent industrialisation has concreted over its remains."

Hawke nodded. History was like a sieve, it dropped more than it kept.

"So we need to extend our search beyond Shinra's grasp."

She tilted her head. "Is there a 'beyond Shinra'?"

"Not according to the official maps, but in practical terms? Cosmo canyon has maintained an extraordinary library for centuries which, as far as I know, hasn't yet been tarnished by Shinra's sticky fingered censors."

Her eyebrows rose. "Unapproved literature? My my, how delicious. How do they get away with it?"

"It's too remote to be worth the effort. And the towns occupants are derided as backwards and superstitious, what's the use of policing them?"

"Huh. What counts as superstitious to Shinra?"

"Oh, anything that doesn't turn a profit."

She chuckled.

The Veil warped. The air crackled and the shafts of light bent around the flower patch, twisting into a glowing knot.

Hawke leapt to her feet. Aerith slept, her face placid, but her efforts straining the very fabric of reality. The knot tightened and tightened, loose coils of power spinning around it. The two stood at the edge, Hawke ready to cast a shield if it misfired, and Genesis reaching out a tentative hand with wonder in his eyes.

The spell released. A pulse of power rippled out with a deep sonorous echo. A misty rain began to fall over the flower patch, sparkling like crystals and splattering upon the flowers. Within the downpour, Aerith sat up.

Her fringe was plastered for her face and her jacket swiftly turning sodden. She smiled and reached out a hand to them.

Genesis stepped through the curtain of water first, his hands lifted and his eyes upturned. Hawke braced herself and followed. She stepped through the rain and into the sea of flowers.

The water was warm with magic and power. It dripped down her neck, into her armour, and along her arms. Something deep inside of her relaxed. She couldn't tell what. Her questing magic searched through her body and found nothing.

She twisted her torso around and didn't feel anything. It dawned on her and she stopped moving. The old ache was missing, a diffuse hum of pain deep inside of her gut and through her lower back from that time the Arishok impaled her. It had been a constant companion for so long she forgot it was even there, let alone what it was like without it.

She straightened her back without pain for the first time in six years.

Her eyes found Aerith. The girl was standing with her hands behind her back, biting her lip and waiting with sparkling, tired eyes for a verdict.

For the first time Hawke wondered if maybe… they really would cure the Blight.

She looked to Genesis. He had his eyes closed and his expression twisted in concentration.

"How do you feel?" Hawke asked.

He shook his head slightly. "I don't- I can't tell-"

She put a hand at the small of his back and let her magic seep into him. It flowed along his veins, listening for the humming song of the Blight.

She couldn't hear it.

She hunted deeper, scraping her raw mana through him and earning a gasp. She stood at his side, one hand at his back the other on his chest. Her eyes closed in focus.

His knee was fully recovered. The pulled muscle in his back relaxed out as the overworked knot eased away. Nearly choking with hope, she sank her magic deep into his internal organs, his liver and lungs. They were clear. His heart-

His heart hummed with the whisper quiet voice of the taint. It beat in time with his blood, rooted so deep within the organ it felt intrinsic to it.

She opened her eyes. Genesis was watching her with such hope. She shook her head.

His face fell. The disappointment was so thick it was palpable, but he held himself up and hid it away behind a fixed expression. Hawke let her hands drop.

"Well… thank you for trying nonetheless," he whispered.

"This was just a first attempt," Hawke offered, "it's still beaten back the taint more than I ever did."

"Maybe… you could try drinking it?" Aerith offered.

They tried, to the same result. Hawke explained how it's progression had been reversed, and how deeply rooted it remained.

Genesis hid how devastating the failure was with straining composure, but he was nothing but grateful to Aerith for the attempt. She apologised anyway and promised next time it would be better.

Hawke bottled up some of the water before the rain stopped and pressed them into his hands for Angeal.

"She's only cast that spell twice in her life," she said quietly. "And it's already done more than I have ever heard of."

He nodded grimly. She'd wished she had kept the statistics of Thedas' Blight to herself.

They had planned to all leave separately and Aerith slunk out first, wet and slightly dispirited. The night wouldn't last much longer. The rain petered out and the flower patch turned muddy. It felt as though all the mysticism of the place had been spent. Genesis left then Hawke did too, locking up after them.


Faint tinges of blue were leaching into the dark sky as Genesis surfaced above the plate. The green light of the reactors turned it turquoise, distorting the shades of the coming dawn.

He returned to HQ. He walked the quiet corridors that would be packed in a few short hours. His boots squelched softly with each step. His damp leathers squeaked and his hair a mess. He didn't care.

He swiped his security card and the elevator took him to the Science Department's levels. It was the only place in the building with all the lights still turned on and it's patrols as frequent as during the day.

Angeal had been moved out of the infirmary's ICU to a quieter corner of the floor. His room was dark and peaceful. Genesis didn't bother turning on the light, his eyes were just as capable in the dark, and he knew the cameras used on this level were designed for well lit areas.

Angeal slept. Genesis checked his pulse, as he always did first. It was light, with a strange tempo that thrummed against Genesis' fingers. He didn't have Hawke's understanding of magical healing, but he knew enough to recognise what he was feeling. He had done this enough times to have picked up the way it made something in his own blood sing back.

The call pricking through his fingers was weaker now.

He cradled Angeal's head, brushing his hair back and turning him gently to check the black veins pulsing on his neck. They had gained an inch since last time. His eyes moved more frantically under their eyelids. It was the only movement he'd been capable of for weeks. Blight dreams were not Fade dreams, they looked worse, inescapable.

A quote from Loveless came to mind and lingered on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to cling to the comfort of the gift of the goddess, but he couldn't stand the silence that would follow. He said nothing and let him go.

He took a bottle from his belt and poured the latest stopgap measure into the IV bag.

Then he sat and watched. The room grew lighter. The dark lines retreated back down Angeal's neck and his skin grew less transparent. Genesis felt tears slid down his cheeks as Angeal awoke with the dawn.


A/N: By the way, I've got some supporting one-shots that belong to this universe, would anyone be interested in seeing those? Anyway, thanks for reading, feel free to leave a review if you feel so inspired.

Next Time: Cosmo Canyon