This chapter is all Hawke and Fenris, next one almost too. If you're not all that interested in what happens with this invented quest, skip to Chapter 36. That's when Hawke remembers everything and goes back to the inn to Fenris and all "hell" breaks loose.

Think of me wherever you are, when it seems like you're reaching the end

Call on me, know in your heart, on one who will always defend, I am thy friend.

The excruciating pain, that harsh blow that imploded inside out of her, as if those millions of falling shards from the phylacteries had all amassed to crush her defenseless heart, it brought her on the verge of tasting what was beyond death, what was worse than death. The crumbling image of the catacombs simply went deaf and the motion of time and action continued, but seemed perfectly pointless. Like life was continuing outside of time and purpose and the world was simply not there, but full of it. Now finding herself again in the heart of cruelty, she knew the particulars of rape, the stinking grease, the squabbling, the curses over the ruin of the lamb. She felt a hideous unsupportable powerlessness. The one that the elves had also come to know and hate, but drink it further as if they were utterly blind at the sight of poison. Loathsome men, men against the gods and against nature. Whatever the cost, if this was death, she would accept it if it meant they were safe. It was her responsibility, it was her idea. She owed it to Dorian for Armand to be safe, she wanted to better the wrongs he had lived through, she wanted Varric to come out of it alive, the one who eagerly remained at her side with no questions asked. Lastly, she would have gone with this mage if it meant not taking…

The last thing she felt was Malcolm's presence, like a summoned wisp from the beyond, cradling her from the collapse, making her numb and fully senseless, when the darkness had descended upon her. She heard something simple she knew all too well was his words, although she couldn't actually hear his voice. But the presence said "Fight. Fight!" No matter what, just fight. She couldn't feel her body, she was already falling. But she'd be damned, damned to dreaded bits of the Void, if she wouldn't…

She couldn't hear herself bravely shouting Eat shit to Avicus. She didn't feel the massive beam of radiant violet she let out with the last poor remains of her magic before collapsing to the ground. The wave elapsed in beams out of each finger and charged with massive force into the mage, and that was it. Quick thinking, but utterly damning, for this was the death of her. She didn't feel it when something intercepted her fall, but she didn't feel the Fade either. It did not hurt her then. It did not shake her. She was too pale of soul, too numbed, too used to seeing all things as figments in a series of unconnected dreams. Very likely, she could not allow herself to believe such a thing.

Yet perhaps this was what it meant – dying. Pitch-black, utter darkness. You hit the bucket and that was it. With so many regrets encaged in the mountain of your despair, that it was more than enough to awaken the magma of remorse, of things that hadn't been said and that will now never be, all from underneath. Turn the sleeping vessel in a volcano. That was it. A dormant volcano, suddenly awakened in the last moments of breath, nearing the eruption only to meet a large lid covering its opening… And so it implodes and destroys itself from inside out, because the days you saved to release your despair and make peace with this underground ocean of sadness and happiness, joy and regret, wandering sighs and forgotten smiles, faint little love... they have no more time to be let out. Brutal hunger, time has, my volcano now learns. Can you hear me cry out to you? Words I thought I'd only joke and figure out later. Come see this, Father, just look at me, everyone - you've got front row seats to the penitence ball! Scenes over scenes now seem so unkind. I can't defend. Maybe I don't like it, but I have no choice. Maybe there's a reason things don't go my way, a lesson that I didn't get to learn in life but I will in death. Just like the change of seasons, it is my turn.

Once, a long time ago, I thought that I knew everything, that I could fight and defend, the fire burning on and on, 'til all is gone except my own little flame that always kept me on. To be the white knight gleaming with hope when others have none, even if all the answers disagreed with the questions held for me. And behold, my resignation is late even now in death!

And then, then there was no time.

Time chasing time… It's taken mine.

Tick, tock. Can't let time win, her soul heard. She felt something glowing alight, perhaps it was the wisp exploding and taking her beyond the realms that men knew, perhaps it was simply Death laughing joyfully. Only that it felt like a thousand bright lights casting a shadow, a loop in the whirlwind, - maybe it really is Father - that stopped her fall and feel her heart beating again, but as if it was punching the walls slowly with all its might. Tick, tock… tick, tock… Can't let time win.

It was filth again, the smell of hemp, the rustling of the rats on the cold hard floors. It didn't occur to her at all just how much lack of perception she had, for her eyes had been open for some time just roaming the walls without actually understanding anything from the scenery. Time to laugh again, but she was too sick. She was emptied out of magic and the daze of this emptiness inside her was more crushing than the actual blow she took to the heart. A prison inside a prison. Wait, was she even rambling about? This was a prison, wasn't it? That's why the word streamed into consciousness in placid metaphors.

Creator noster, qui es in caelis

"Maker's bloody testicles," she said, words propelled out in empty space, without being heard in her impaired consciousness.

Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum

"Father?" she said again, but couldn't hear herself.

Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra

She was losing perception with every second, only feeling the pressure in her forehead and the daze from the absence of all human strength and magic. She didn't understand who she was, where she was, what those words were. Only that they kept being uttered.

A torch blazed in front of her, but the light from the flame was shooting in severed beams at her face, that much she understood. Fire by fire, it scorched her mind and unsettled her soul, but brought her closer to the realm of conscious thought. She tilted her head on the ground and saw the iron bars.

Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie

No... this was a familiar voice that kept muttering a familiar language. Once again, she retreated into her deepest mental hiding place. She had no body anymore. She lay on the cold ground, unfeeling of her body. She put her mind at work on the tone of this voice near her, such sweet and faint voice.

And so on it went, the eternal incomprehensible uttering, the voice gradually becoming weak in the silence.

Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris

She did not give responses.

She spoke no words to him. She did not even let him know she was there. She couldn't even explain this terrible fate which had befallen them, but more because she was simply out of this world. She wanted her father to simply shut up. They had enough time in the prison of the Void to argue over untimely tragedies and unforgivable regrets.

Yet on he went, now that is charges mercifully slept, muttering alone to comfort himself, or perhaps merely to remind himself he was still existing, "Et ne nos iuducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo."

Fenris. She had slipped into a shock near despair, as she realized this was his voice. She let her mind recover the sight of blowing the spirit wave on Avicus, the sight of people burning. She recovered the image of Fenris going in front of her. Fenris, a living blue-glowing torch, turning and twisting in the fire, his growls of pain like animal roars and his arms reaching heavenward like spiders in the bloody flame coming at them. And the invisible wisp protecting her from falling, like a comforting specter. Whatever this impression of her father did from the beyond, Fenris did in the physical world.

She rose up, panic-stricken and going haywires while tumbling over the iron bars in hot and cold palpitations. "Fenris?" she called out his name in desperation.

The voice was no more. Time to laugh again at herself for hearing ghosts after death, but she was still too sick to taste the irony. Instead, she felt like crying. She was going to burn in the Void. This was the Void.

But then the voice came again from her right, deep and stricken with anguish, "Hawke, you're- … I thought you-"

"I'm fine," she said as quick as thunder. "Although I thought I died and ended up in the Void. Heart crushing and head blowing up, then pitch-black, only to wake up in terrible smells and filthy spaces. There were simply not enough reasonable guesse- AH

The adrenaline rush expired on her legs and she fell down while still holding at the bars.

"Hawke!" she heard Fenris shout abruptly. "What's happening?"

"Nuh-nothing, I-" she stuttered and growled in pain as she half-rose from her back. "Empty reserves, that's all."

"You were out for a long time." A flash of bangs and voices came to her, from when she probably awoke for a few seconds. She heard someone throwing someone else in, then the door had slammed shut with a deafening crash; she initially felt relief that nothing violent happened afterwards, but once the captors were gone, that relief evaporated; now it grew rampant and powerfully magnified.

"You didn't come at the same time with me," she said finally. She dragged herself to sit on the floor with her back against the wall that was separating their two cells. "What happened? Where are … are they…"

Fenris hesitated with his answer. He got distracted with battling assassins and remarkably distanced himself from Hawke and Avicus when he saw him cast the red and black fumes around her body. He rushed up in front of her after she had apparently cast a violet light that fried the mage and threw him into a wall. What followed he didn't remember. He only knew that when he awoke, they were in a different hallway, and there were only Zevran and Varric there to fill him in on the details. Hawke and Armand were taken by the two masters after Avicus had cast a barrier and ran with Pasquale and their unconscious companions through the hidden passage they came from.

Varric was panic-stricken, something one could never notice unless they chose to look at the faint trembling in his legs. He contained his emotions and listened to Zevran as he explained the plan he had just then cooked up to save them. They had to cheat their way to the prison by taking the long road, double upon their route through the spiral they initially avoided a few hours before.

They reached the edge of a hallway that was stripped of stairs, the floor far below harboring their collapse. Zevran took out a grapple and tangled it into a pillar, issuing Varric to hold on to him as they went down, then Fenris would have his turn and go down all by himself. Whence they reached the floor below, Zevran shouted at him to come down. He had his foot right on the edge, looking down at them, and he couldn't bring himself to motion. A sudden rush came over him and paralyzed him beyond repair. He felt his face draw a haunted scowl and he pressed his lips tight, before turning around and running in the opposite direction as fast as he could. What followed after was simple – and foolish. He roamed the old passages alone, driven by a force so great and fierce, he himself did not have the stomach to question. Eventually he got ambushed and captured.

"Varric and Zevran were safe when I left them. Armand on the other hand was captured at the same time with you," he finally uttered unemotionally, because there was too much emotion that he simply had to contain.

"When you left them?" she asked bewilderedly. "Why in blazes would you leave them?"

Fenris didn't answer for a while, seeming as if he was gathering his thoughts. "We had to find another way into the prison, so I thought it best if we split."

"How much smoke did you inhale that it made you 'think' it was best to leave your group and wonder alone in an ancient catacomb nesting assassins and blood mages?" Hawke almost shouted angrily.

"It doesn't matter any longer," Fenris muttered, sitting with his back against the wall without knowing she was just beyond the stone wall doing the same thing.

Hawke would have slapped him if he were in the same cell as she was, but since his luck seemed to finally spark with the current geography, she changed the subject. "Do you know where Armand is?"

"No. But no doubt he is near," Fenris replied calmly. "The mage values him and will not let him go again."

She swallowed heavily and thought it would be best to shift his focus away from the resemblance of his and Armand's situations. This was his deepest fear coming alive for someone else, under his own eyes. And they couldn't afford to be unsettled now. "We will find them. And when we do, do not doubt that I will make them beg for death."

He didn't answer at first, and she imagined he was shaking his head or rolling his eyes at her brave, but ultimately foolish remarks. They were more than doomed at the moment. "I'll take your word on that," he finally said.

After a few moments of silence, he was the one to say something again. "I wonder if Danarius keeps a phylactery of my blood that he uses to track me down."

"Even if he does, it wouldn't be of much use to him," Hawke said quickly. "It only glows when the person is near, as in… in a roughly hundred mile radius. Even here, there's no chance he'd find you. As for Zevran and Armand, well… it's obvious why we had company in the catacombs."

"Then it is good that I ran so far away," he said calmly. Really, really good, indeed.

She wanted so desperately bad to divert his attention, but she couldn't bring herself to rise to her feet and attempt to get them out.

Still bound in the cell, while Hawke was out, Fenris listened to a hollow preternatural voice from far away in the prison chanting with a villainous gusto the awful hymn, Dies Irae, or Day of Wrath. A low drum carried on the zesty rhythm, as if it were a song for dancing rather than a terrible lament of the Final Days. On and on went the Tevinter words speaking of the day when all the world would be turned to ashes, when the great trumpets of the Maker would blast to signal the opening of all graves and the Old Gods themselves would perish. Death itself and nature would both shudder. All souls would be brought together, no soul able anymore to hide anything from the Maker. Out of His book, every sin would be read aloud. Vengeance would fall upon everyone. Who was there to defend them, but the Judge Himself, their majestic god. Their only hope was the pity of this God, the God who had suffered just as much because of them as they soon will at his behest. As if he had made a sacrifice all this time, and it wouldn't go to waste.

Yes, beautiful old words, but they issued from an evil mouth, the mouth of one who did not even know their meaning, who uttered regally along the tapping drum as if ready for a feast.

He would have fallen apart in anguish if not for having heard Hawke's peaceful breathing from the other cell that let him know she was still alive. Her breathing was a much more soothing chant that powerfully drowned the dreaded little voice singing on to its spirited little drum.

He knew it was not her fault. Even if, if not for her, he probably wouldn't have gone into this mess. Although he was probably lying to himself, because he would not turn his back on a person who went through the same thing and had a chance at total freedom. What was foolish was to make whatever became of Armand as a condition to his own fate. If he would not get out alive from this, what hope would he have to be free and lead a normal life? It was foolish, and he would not allow himself to sink his thoughts deeper into it. He didn't have to work on that very hard, because there was another equally powerful, if not bigger issue haunting him and that was Hawke's safety, though he would never admit it. This too was a much too tantalizing thought to brood over in such times, because he was now more than ever proving to himself just how far he would go for another being… and that he had found a purpose and a reason worthy enough to be ready to die for.

Only I heard the rustling, impish laughter everywhere. Only I know how many preternatural monsters are lurking bout us, as we were brought into this light of a monstrous fire, entombed in the prison.

He was touched by her bravery, and he pulled his thoughts together. He must stop shrinking in horror from his last memories and he must imagine them living, getting out of this dreaded place and going back home. Home?

His thoughts were smitten away from a sudden question coming from the other cell. "What was that, what you kept saying to yourself?"

"What was I… saying to myself?" Fenris repeated her question because he didn't understand it. "Oh… that," he uttered faintly, as if he appeared to be embarrassed. "I was… praying."

He expected a long pause from her, but she rapidly asked, "What were you praying for?"

"Is it important?" Fenris asked calmly, issuing away with defenses.

"I wouldn't know unless you told me first," Hawke replied suavely. "Well?"

"It was just a Tevinter prayer," Fenris pressed, averting any insight on his troubled mind. "I did not really know what I was praying for."

"Well, how did the prayer go?" Hawke insisted in a soothing tone.

Fenris inhaled defensively and pressed his lips, but finally gave in. "Our Maker, that resides in the skies, hallowed by Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is beyond. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil."

"I really didn't see you as the praying for deliverance after being captured type," Hawke mused lightly.

"That's because I'm not," Fenris muttered sharply.

"Maybe that's because you don't get captured easily," Hawke said with a faint smile.

"And yet here I am," Fenris replied sorrowfully. "My luck has apparently expired."

She would have said Oh come on you pessimistic idiot, of course we'll get out of here, but a pain in her lungs made her cough out heavily and she had to pull herself together. She had to find the strength to rise from the ground and proceed with their escape…however impossible it seemed at the moment.

"Are you alright?" Fenris asked a bit sharply, perhaps containing his concern and impatience. "Hawke."

"I told you I'm fine, Fenris," Hawke said assertively, feeling the fever on her forehead and pressing her eyes shut. "Empty reserves, that's all, like I said."

"And what does that mean exactly?" Fenris pressed with obvious discomfort in his voice.

"It means I'll be alright soon enough and you needn't concern yourself," Hawke uttered confidently.

"Don't lie to me," Fenris muttered harshly. "I saw what that mage did to you. I saw you casting all those spells. You should be-"

"Dead?" Hawke interrupted him. "And I'm not. So, this is old news."

"Vishante kaffas." He should have been more vigilant; more –

"Praying and now going back to cursing. You're the perfect Andrastian, aren't you?" Hawke mused sarcastically.

"You need lyrium, don't you?" he pressed. "Otherwise you're bound to lose your mind again, am I wrong?"

"If that were the case, I should be going insane lunatic right now, but as you can see, I'm only the good old part-lunatic part-insane Hawke. And even so, I don't have any pots."

He hesitated with his answer, but it didn't matter now either way. "… Ihad one. The bastard took it away."

"You took a lyrium potion with you?" Hawke asked in confusion. "For me?"

"It matters little now," Fenris said. "Next time, take your own. Else I'm going to personally make sure you don't see the light of day."

Hawke snorted in amusement. "Wow. You're cute when you go all commanding mad protector on me."

"Oh? Well I am about to get utterly adorable soon," Fenris replied in an all-serious grumpy tone.

"If Zevran were here, he'd probably say An invitation! Succes!" Hawke mused back.

"Or take remark of the opportunity to fulfill some perverted prison fantasy," Fenris replied with discomfort in his tone.

Hawke chuckled at his words and arched away an eyebrow. "What are you wearing?"

"What am I … wearing?" Fenris asked in confusion. "They did not take away my clothes. I'm still-"

"No, not like that," Hawke said in amusement, but decided to give up. "Nevermind."

"And here I thought only the pirate tried to guess away the color of my underclothes," Fenris muttered back waspishly.

Hawke gasped childishly. "So you were playing dumb. Bah, this act of innocence is getting stale, Fenris, you know that?"

"I do," Fenris said without fault, drawing up a faint smile. "But it's fairly entertaining for me; to make you all think I'm innocent."

She snorted. "Yeah, 'cause you're a real heartbreaker on the inside, I'm sure," Hawke said sarcastically.

"I said no such thing," Fenris mused calmly. "I might understand some dirty code, but I am no," he paused to roll his eyes, as if she would even see that, "Adonis."

Hawke felt the annoyance in his tone as he said the last word, beyond the appearance of mocking. "Yeah, I saw just how much you made out of his dirty code. You really don't like the guy, do you?"

Fenris pressed his lips in annoyance. "I don't –anything- him. What would be the point?"

Hawke laughed. "Well, he is a rather important figure; if not for the fact that he's the Warden's husband, then for the simple reality that he is fairly conditional to our escape."

"Yes, and he made it quite clear that he was married from all the advances he made on you," Fenris uttered in disgust rather quickly, followed by a pause to realize how easy it was every time he talked to her after a while, just how easy it came to be that he would express himself without care for feeling stripped.

Hawke smirked joyfully. "You know he was doing that only to avert our attention from his true identity, right? And you bit his bait quite fast, Sir." He didn't answer, so she thought this was a good topic to avert attention from the restlessness of being imprisoned. She shook her head and grinned shortly. "Who would have thought you were the jealous type?"

"There was no jealousy," Fenris pressed in annoyance, gritting his teeth and clenching his grip on his knees. She didn't say anything, giving him only silence so he knew he didn't have to see her to know her eyebrow was already reaching for the heavens from that bold-faced lie. "Fine… maybe I was a bit," he rolled his eyes as he paused, "jealous."

"First step is admitting it," Hawke mused joyfully.

One corner of his lips tensed in annoyance as he frowned. After a few moments of silence, his faint voice reached her ear. "Does it… bother you?"

"No, of course not," Hawke said firmly. "In fact-" she paused and Fenris raised an eyebrow as he waited for her to continue. "Well there's no real way to say this without sounding evil, but, I did kind of… enjoy it."

"You enjoyed it?" he asked in confusion.

"Not your distress, just…" She rolled her eyes and laughed softly to herself. "Well, it felt nice to know you would be set off by the chance of –"

"I understand," Fenris interrupted her.

"Sorry," Hawke said with a crooked smile, even if he couldn't see her.

"Apology not accepted," Fenris said in amusement, but keeping his sharp tone.

"Excuse me?" Hawke asked in amusing outrage. "Did I hurt your feelings or something?"

"It doesn't matter. What matters now is that you owe it to me to make up for your… " he grinned deviously, "impertinence."

Hawke's eyebrow really could have reached the seventh level of heaven by now. "My impertinence?"

"For not telling your pursuer to back off and as it followed, making me continue in my jealous ways," Fenris pretended innocently.

"Oh, bugger off. I know Armand told you he was married and it was all a big joke." He didn't answer, perhaps to gather up his thoughts and track down whatever memory that slipped when Armand used the common tongue to tell him that. She explained, "Yes, I heard married and joke. I also heard horse and death, but regardless, I didn't need much to make up the general idea. And you didn't tell me afterwards, making me continue to work my ass off in trying to unmask the bastard." She grinned shortly. "We are even."

Fenris exhaled and smirked as if he were proud to admit defeat. "Touché."

"And even so, what am I to you that I should tell a pursuer to back off?" Hawke pressed deviously.

How utterly annoying she could be sometimes, pressing his buttons in the most inappropriate of times. Even so, it was shamefully thrilling to admit he was intrigued by her resistance and cocksure attitude. "That solely depends on you, Hawke," he said nonchalantly.

"I strongly disagree," she replied confidently. "It's up to you more than you think."

"No more riddles, please," Fenris pressed grumpily.

"Shit," she shouted suddenly. "Ah, Maker's tittie-fucking breath, Andraste, Hessarrian, Shartan and the fucking donkey sitting behind!" She stroke a fever and really needed something to get her strength back, because her stomach was twirling and her veins were thickening in pain.

"Venhedis. What is happening with you? Tell me," Fenris shouted in anger, having lost his patience.

Hawke growled in annoyance. "I'm a warrior who happens to also be a mage in massive withdrawal; what do you think is happening?"

He hated himself that he couldn't do anything for her. Converting his fear into anger was all he knew in these situations.

"This is exactly why I hate that man so viciously bad," Hawke finally muttered, the pain still resounding from her tone. "Maker I would kill him."

"Why didn't you?" Fenris asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Back there, you had him. But you kept shouting at him and broke the phylacteries instead of going for the kill."

A long pause from her part, followed by a deep sigh. "I don't know. My mind was playing tricks on me." She thought of how much she did want to kill him. "I wanted to scare him, really scare him. I knew that I couldn't kill him alone, but I could at least keep his focus on me instead of shifting it to…"

"To what in blazes would he have shifted his attention to? He was drawn to you from the very beginning," Fenris said angrily, cruel distress in his tone as he finished.

Hawke closed her eyes shut and sighed. "To you."

"Me?"

"You didn't hide your special abilities. They would have went after you if I hadn't led them on with my own confident speeches. They were looking for whoever would be most useful to them. As you see, they didn't kill me. They brought me here." She sighed again in annoyance and muttered sharply, "And you followed, like an idiot."

Stupid woman. "Why would you do that?"

"I have already answered that. So they wouldn't go after you," she pressed firmly.

He lost it, beyond a doubt. He shouted at her, "So the best strategy is to offer yourself on a plate?"

"I didn't offer myself on a plate, I simply used their already existing interest in me to my advantage. You didn't see me surrender willingly now, did you?"

"Still," Fenris said and paused. "It was foolish."

Hawke pressed her lips in annoyance. "What was more foolish is you going in alone to find me and letting yourself get captured. You made all my efforts to ensure your safety go straight in the garbage."

"Right, forgive my honest attempts to ultimately do the same thing. I shall endeavor not to give a damn in the future," Fenris said angrily.

"Good," Hawke said firmly, to his surprise. "Then it's settled."

"Whatever makes you happy," Fenris muttered sarcastically.

"Oh, don't give me that," Hawke said in annoyance. "I'm not your blighted master."

Fenris frowned deeply. "Why in the Void would you think-"

"Because I'm a mage, Fenris. That hasn't changed and it never will."

He shook his head in amazement. "The redundancy of your statement is undeniable. I simply can't see your point."

"Well, how much time before you blame me for whatever is going to happen to us if this ends badly, hm?

"The decisions were my own, Hawke. Don't stretch your paranoia to such outrageous extents." He sighed when she kept silent, so he pressed with honesty, "You know I'm sane enough to understand the difference between youand the man who put us in here."

She exhaled in a small fit of sorrow. "Yes, and say… if the Templars one day come to my doorstep and take me away – not kill me, just take me away… what would you do?"

His sudden silence was enough. She sighed. "Well, points for honesty."

This impossible woman and her trapping questions.

She was herself again, hideously wounded, a botched reassemblage of the strong angelic child she'd been before his attempts to bring out the woman in her, when she was locked out in the brutal morning to meet her death with a clear mind. The recent event with the blood mage brought to light the awful unhealed evidence that she was always going to be a mage, a blasphemous creation of nature, perhaps, as it turned her to a monument in ash – because she would always be susceptible to the transformation he kept condemning at mages. She only needed a noble reason to do it, though she might not dare to admit it. And if she would ever come to be what he expected of other mages - only not her if she would only allow him to further prove that statement - she would be no less than ready to be burned down at the stake or smitten by his very sword.

And even so, perhaps she would fear he would be too dried up of his own free will not to follow her through hell as if she was a twisted reflection of his master. Perhaps that drained her of her own will to truly allow him in, despite her full acceptance of him as a being and eternal friend. Rather like a beautiful rose skillfully dehydrated in sand by its own will, so that it retains its proportions, nay, even its fragrance and even its tint, perishing, but not truly dying. For all the good she did and the people she saved, she was perhaps becoming dry, heartless, a stranger to herself. It seemed as if they were racing together for who gives in to emptiness first. He was no stranger to being utterly alone and unaccepting of oneself. He had no doubt that he could turn into a beast again. Understanding all too well the limits of her warped spirit, it probably would not be long before she dismissed him and he would have to swallow this illusion of a happy life and move on.

Even so, what did he have to tell this honest good woman, Hawke, this all too self-loathing version of the stronger and brasher Malcolm Hawke, he could only presume, except that in the world she would come to find enough good to sustain her, and that in her soul she must find the courage to exist as she was regardless of what she was born with. He could make no judgement. If indeed, it was her choice even now to go on living and fighting for whatever she believed in, did he really need to remind her of that? Without of course, looking to images of heroes such as the Warden and villains such as Avicus to give her an artificial or short-lived peace, because she was called upon by fate to restore balance in her own way. Her outside actions were quite clear in their intent, but inside, she was a mess. One other horrible inescapable and unforgettable ingredient went into the core of the issue.

That it seemed obvious, now more than ever, that there was not only the great stone wall they were both resting their backs on, that was separating them in their own private cages – and that there was more than just two physical cages that entrapped them in their helplessness and dictating their tale.

Now he wished more than ever that the perverted blonde elf would swoop in to save them and gloat at how ridiculously awesome he was compared to their idiocy for getting themselves caught. Ah, but what did it matter? It didn't seem that they were going to show up and save the day; their end was nearing and inevitable. It did not matter anymore.

"Remember when Varric was set out to take his revenge and gave you those insane punishments?" Fenris asked calmly. "Specifically, when he made you guess the ingredients of his new drink."

"Yes, I blacked out and woke up in his bed with you sleeping the night face-down on the table," Hawke remembered in amusement.

"Remember when you climbed one the roof and put a hand over my mouth the moment Varric and the abomination came out looking for you?"

It seemed too far away in time to recall an already blind memory. "Vaguely."

Fenris sighed and continued, "I restrained you, because you kept muttering in your half dazed state that they were going to take you. That they were coming after you and you were afraid."

"Is this story going anywhere?" Hawke asked defensively, because she didn't care to recall moments when she wasn't in control of her vulnerabilities.

"Patience, woman," Fenris said sharply and smirked.

She looked to her right at the iron bars. "Yeah, we've got time."

"I could only assume you were talking about the Templars; that they were coming to take you," Fenris continued calmly. "Well imagine me, holding you in that deeply fearful state," he described and gestured as he did so despite her not being able to see, "placing my head over yours and telling you that nobody was going to take you."

"Nice dream," Hawke said defensively. "That was not what you said."

"And how would you know?" Fenris asked angrily. "Am I supposed to believe you suddenly remember what happened?"

"I don't remember one bit, but I can bet you my house that you didn't say that. Not truthfully, to be exact," Hawke said firmly. She couldn't grasp it, couldn't believe in it, couldn't rouse her dulled heart to triumph in what his voice had told her in rupturing calmness to be true.

"Then behold, I am the proud new owner of the famous Amell Estate. I will want my keys once we get back to Kirkwall, especially the ones for the hidden cellar up to Darktown, to be more exact," he said mockingly.

"Will you at least keep my Mother in there? She makes excellent pie," Hawke said childishly.

Fenris laughed. "I would never kick that woman out. She does make excellent pie." He kept his smirk and forgot what they were fighting about not a minute ago. "You on the other hand…"

"No worries. I'll take over your mansion and finally give it a proper make over now that you'll be too busy raiding my cellar for cheaper wine," Hawke said in annoyance. "Oh, I can't wait."

"At least that's something to hope for," Fenris said calmly, then turned his head to the iron bars. "Are you feeling better?"

"Now that I get my wish to restore your wreck of a house, yep. Pretty dandy," Hawke said childishly.

"I meant your health, not your morale," Fenris pressed in annoyance. "And don't lie to me."

"I'm in pain and I'm feverish. Just another Tuesday, really," Hawke replied confidently.

"Can you stand up?"

She sighed and thought it was worth a shot. What more could she lose? A leg? Improbable. "Gimme a sec." She got a hold of the bars and focused her weight on her right leg; after a while of grunting and grumbling in frustration, she finally rose straight up. "Lieutenant Hawke reporting for duty. It appears I am fit to stand… and remain a statue in the process."

"Hawke," she heard him say in annoyance.

She looked to her right to see that Fenris had his hand out in-between the bars and reaching for her own. More than that she couldn't see. She contained her smile and stuck out her own hand to let him catch it; he held it firmly without uttering another word. They weren't necessary, he would say. And what a wonder it was that all they had done and allowed each other up until then should seem but a thing they truly shared, a common and inevitable catastrophe, but all in good intentions and a sort of honest understanding, now magnified by the lament of what seemed as the end of them. Letting the moments just pass away, she entrusted her hand to him and felt the refreshing coldness of his hand against her feverish one, tangled up into one another as strongly as they could.