Note from the author: I am currently in the processing of rewriting/editing this fanfiction because I started it when I was 20 and I am now 27 and there's just been a whole world of difference from how my writing is now and how it used to be back then to the point I am cringing at myself. I've also matured as person and I am starting to find the first chapters a bit too childish. So if anyone who is re-reading, I have now rewritten the first two chapters and will keep editing along. That is not to say that I am changing any action, I'm more so just cleaning up or re-wording some dialogue.

In the hallway, there was a lamp alight. On the left, her father was fallen with his back against the wall, wet and very empty-eyed. On the right, her mother was holding her mouth and falling on her knees, despite Aldrich's attempts to keep her standing. She was crying. No, trying to; the way people did when they had so much to let out that their faces would completely contract mid-cry and only a coarse, low-pitched whine escaped.

The dogs were extremely distressed, barking in circles as if not knowing where or whom to bark at.

Urgently, she walked down the corridor to look at her father.

"I found him outside like this. He-he wasn't in bed. He was wandering near the forest," said Aldrich, as Hawke kneeled to look at the catatonic Malcolm. He was all wrapped up for going outside, and he kept his arms locked across his chest. His long hair covered his childlike face in wet strands. He didn't make eye contact. He was somewhere else.

"Andrei, grab a blanket and boil some water. It's okay, dad, you're okay..." she said, holding his face gently. She looked up at Aldrich. "Is he hurt? Mum, stop crying, he's not hurt. Why is she crying?"

Her father-in-law was a few palpitations away from hyperventilating. He didn't speak. She looked back. She looked at her mother. Her heart was in her throat.

Andrei came back with the blanket and waited.

"Come on, daddy, come up, let's get you in bed," she said and tried to make him stand. He was a dead-weight. Andrei grabbed him from the other side. "No, don't force him. He's still confused. He might think we're attacking him."

"He needs to get changed at the very least," said Andrei, and then abandoned ship to help Leandra.

Fenris, who at this point retained his self-awareness, followed him. Leandra was reacting way too strongly. He looked back to Hawke and her father. She was looking into his eyes, stroking his hair, getting it out of his face. "You're so cold. What possessed you to go out in the rain?"

"I... had to..." said Malcolm hazily. "M-my sister... she... she—"

"Andrei, check on the girls, no one's upstairs," said Hawke, interrupting him.

Fenris started to make for the stairs before he stopped himself. He was so confused. He wanted to be real, so he could help. But he couldn't become real. Maybe he should go look anyway?

"Ok, dad, you're all wet. Aren't you cold?"

"Yes."

Fenris couldn't stand being still. He didn't like being in the hallway either. He went up... and there was nothing but darkness. No sound, no nothing. Right... of course. Follow Hawke's eyeballs.

"How's a warm pair of jammies sound? Do you want to get changed?" he heard her downstairs.

"No..." Malcolm shook his head and tightened his chest grips. "She was... she—"

"No?" she interrupted. "You wanna get pneumonia?"

"No... no..." He was going to cry.

She didn't want to be forceful... but she was so tired. They had spent four days in a row just fighting and carrying bodies. Neither she nor Bethany bothered to hide their magic anymore. It was that bad.

After they heard of the King's death and grimly realised Lothering had been forgotten and abandoned by Loghain's armies, it felt like a miracle when the Templars came to help. But were they really sent to Lothering, or did their conscience break when they saw the crowded misery around them?

Just that day she'd carried five sick kids, four of whom died; saw dozens of elders die; carried their corpses to the mass grave. The rain was a menace, as they couldn't burn the dead.

Traumatised, defeated and exhausted, Malcolm getting an episode during this shit was the last thing she was prepared for.

"I'm sorry, dad... I'm gonna have to make you."

"No, no, NO! NO! NO!" He became extremely agitated at the touch. But she did it anyway, and took off his coat, and—

"No, DON'T!" cried Fenris, but what could that do?

His grip went through her, as it should. He was on his knees. Then he crawled, picked himself up and... there she was, as the grave had said.

In Malcolm's tight arm wrap was the grey, lifeless Holly.

Hawke lost her mind, tried to revive her, heal her, resuscitate her, anything. Her cries alerted Andrei, who rushed back down and stopped in shock. Then he went to grab Hawke away. Her screams were just absolutely disconcerting.

He had to get out. He had to get out. WHERE IS THE DOOR?!

He went through a wall; the wall didn't seem to mind.

He felt the cold breeze brush against him; his chest moving way too fast, his eyelids turning wet.

He put his hand on his chest, and then... he heard a cry. From the... shed?

Approaching Sunrise, The Hawkes' Shed

Inside, Hawke was looming over a small coffin. She would cry, pause and stare, then break again. She looked as if she wanted to crawl in and be buried with her.

She shouldn't have been here alone. She shouldn't have to... What is she doing?!

The sleeve came off her arm and it had cuts on them. Old ones, with whiter skin on top, definitely nothing recent. She was rubbing them against the wood of the coffin, and she kept crying.

"Hawke what are you doing?!" Fenris shouted.

She had a knife. Why is nobody here?

Vishante kaffas. It is SO frustrating to not be real.

She was going to cut herself.

"Don't do it," said Fenris, but he couldn't hear himself. "Don't do it!" His voice sounded different. What was happening? And there he was, basically right next to him, Bucky, the fear demon.

She was startled, and immediately closed the coffin. "What the—? How?"

Bucky looked around. "I don't know... I was... I was very very bothered!"

"What?" She looked angry and confused.

"You were in a lot of pain a-and... it woke me up! I couldn't go back to sleep. I felt like I was going to die! I wanted to do something... I think that's when it happened."

"But you're not really here, are you?"

"I don't know." The demon looked genuinely confused. His hand went through the candle on the table. "Can... uh... can I... help?" He looked at her hands. "Please don't do that. That's not good for you."

"Why not?" she said coldly, despite the anger leaking through. "It's not your fucking body. It's mine. It's my body."

"It's your body," agreed Bucky. "But you also have a mind and it's... it's very bad in there."

Did he look different? He looked less... lizardy. There were patches of purplish turquoise skin where the scales fell off. Weird... alien-looking.

"Oh, I get it, 'cause you reside there, like that's not weird," she said.

"Yes, it is weird. It's... not good." The demon put his hands on his head in distress. "I don't know... I don't know who I am anymore!"

He did look weird. His face went back into his head, his nose in turn came out of his face more, he almost had... something like lips. Fenris's eyes came down. He had no genitals. Did demons have genitals? Why was this a question in his head? Let's rewind. Bucky looked like a lanky, purplish turquoise, genderless elf. And he wore overalls. They? They wore overalls.

"Get in line," she said crossly.

"I think I made myself forget," they said in the usual Chasind accent.

She frowned. "How?"

"How do you breathe?" they said. She shrugged. "See, you don't know. But you do it. It's useful, I imagine."

"Ok, just... ok, well..." She was thinking. "Can you make me forget?"

Bucky, if they had eyebrows, would have raised them. "Maybe. I can't do anything to you, but... maybe I can if you let me?"

"I..." She looked back at the coffin.

"If it will stop you from hurting yourself."

"I'm not gonna permanently hurt myself, I'm not... suicidal. Actually, maybe I am. I feel a strong urge to end things. But I also want to live." She shook her head rapidly. "So, in conclusion, no to the end, yes to self-harm."

"But you're not just self-harming."

Hawke frowned.

"You were going to look inside her head," said Bucky, pointing at coffin. "Weren't you?"

"How the hell would you know that?"

"I feel everything when you're hurting."

"I don't get it. I thought it was good for you, the hurt."

"I don't feel good. I don't! And I'm not the only one," said Bucky in a very agitated way, and then they held their head in pain.

She felt her ears ringing and the room growing colder. Before she knew it, Crowley and Murmur appeared, except Murmur looked like a black woman with purple eyes and purple hair wearing monk's robes, and Crowley looked... like some carrotface arsehole.

"Great, I've got a committee now," said Hawke sarcastically.

Crowley, Bucky and Murmur talked over each other, so it was a mix of "Damn right you—", "How the hell—" and "La responsabilité."

Murmur was Orlesian? Oh, right, he was. She was? She was.

"I'm sorry, but since when are three demons in my fucking head the 'responsibility squad?'"

"You have no idea what we've been going through—" said Crowley accusatorily.

Hawke crossed her arms and looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Please, tell me more about your pain."

"We're not the demons there anymore, oh no. We're peanuts compared to your original demons. They fucking scare me," protested Crowley.

"What original demons? You're the fucking original," she said to Crowley in anger.

"I have a face," said Crowley, which Fenris now realised sounded very Ferelden, "but believe me, all those thoughts you have in your head, they're alive too, and they've got their own shit. Dark shit. Like when you were taken from your mum."

"That's how we met," she said.

"Yeah, you are not over that shit," said Crowley in a serious tone. "Then when you and your mum were stolen while she was pregnant. When that guy Remus sold you."

"That's how we met," said Murmur.

Hawke exasperated. "What good are you? I don't wanna remember that!"

"But you came back," said Bucky, stepping closer. "Don't you see?"

"See?" Hawke said loudly. "I see a madwoman talking to ghosts out of despair. I need answers. I need something."

"You want to know the truth?" said Murmur.

"Like you don't already know that," she said.

"I'm just playing off of what those two tell me. Frankly, all I hear are those fucking voices," said Crowley.

"What do they say?" asked Bucky.

Crowley put his hands in his pauper brand trouser pockets and circled them around. "Shit like... 'Why do you even bother?', 'You can't do anything right', 'You've failed her!', 'You're trash!', 'You should kill yourself!'"

"All accurate," said Hawke.

"Strange," said Bucky. "You hear things. I feel things. Murmur?"

Murmur rolled her now plural eyes, thinking. "I see Devon."

"That's quite interesting, isn't it?" said Bucky.

"I'm sorry to break this kumbaya of personal transformations, but I don't want to hear or see or feel any of it! I just want to forget! I want to make it stop!"

"No," said Murmur. "No, you can't forget. You still have people, and us. Yes, we are people," she said, a bit uncertain, looking at Bucky, who nodded reassuringly.

"And me, for what it's worth," said a grumpy feminine voice, which came from a black cat on a wooden table. Wait, what?

"Did you appear as a cat so as not to anger me?" said Hawke.

"Meow," said Ravena.

"Don't do that. It's... even creepier, somehow," she said.

The cat jumped off the table and became a tall Chantry-clad woman with dark lipstick and eyeliner and chains and a stick attached to her belt.

Hawke gulped.

Murmur looked up at Ravena amused. "What are you like?"

"I guess I'm from the..." she responded, producing the stick," 'Forgive me Mommy for I have sinned' persuasion."

There it was. That moment things were falling apart so bad you started to find things funny.

The demons looked at her as she started guffawing nervously, interminably.

Ravena and Murmur smiled and shrugged at each other.

Crowley pointed at Desire. "Good to know for later." Then pointed at Hawke. "But to get back, you want to do a blood magic."

"Whoa, naughty girl," said Ravena, slapping the stick on her palm.

"… Only a little," confessed Hawke, feeling cornered.

"That's what they all say," said Crowley, whom Fenris immediately agreed with. "Three days later they're sacrificing all the redheads in the village 'cause their blood is too impure."

"What the fuck, Crowley, I'm a redhead," she said.

"It was just an example. A real example, might I add. Regardless, it is not a good idea. You'll do this and all that pain you have will just take over, completely. You'll lose your mind. You'll fucking die."

"Wait, if she wants to learn the truth, why not just let her?" said Ravena, who stepped in as a dissenting voice.

"Ye what?" said Crowley angrily, crossing his arms. His fists were closed, and he hid them.

"Blood is just a tool, and it's not like she is using it offensively. There'd be no point."

"What she said," seconded Hawke.

"But is it right to invade the psyche of another?" asked Bucky.

"When they're d—" she tried to say it, but couldn't. "She's not in there anymore. Not really."

"True enough," said Murmur. "But do you think you can live with yourself?"

Hawke rushed towards them. "I know something's not right. My dad wouldn't hurt Holly. Not even delirious. He thought she was his sister. He'd told me about a baby sister he left behind when taken to the Circle. He'd told me how she'd run off in the woods."

The entities looked at each other.

"It doesn't make sense, and there's no cause of death I can see. She didn't get hurt anywhere, he didn't smother her, there's just no explanation. And frankly... I don't think he could live with himself."

"Bad things happen. A lot of it, meaningless," said Crowley cynically.

"Hey, you shut the fuck up! You don't know shit about life. You just think you do because you've spent most of yours with your ear glued tightly to mortals' thoughts for fun. That's not the same thing as actually dealing with this shit!"

Crowley looked at her incredulously. "Does this look like fun to you?!"

She shrugged, unconvinced.

"I am stuck here, every day, in your mortal coil, a prisoner, force-fed crap upon crap of obsessive, unsettling, apocalyptic mind-chatter." With his hands in his pockets, he shrugged and gave a fake smile. "Not my kind of party."

She rolled her eyes. "Maker's balls, would you relax? It's not like I'll live forever, unlike some. You'll have your moment's release."

"Yes, this does seem like a conflict of interest," said Ravena, backing away a bit.

"We don't know that," said Murmur, dragging her back. "What if we die with her?"

"All the more reason to calm down and circle back," said Bucky, raising their palms. "As much as I would like a theory, any theory, to be confirmed, going about looking to verify it seems dangerous and stupid and a threat to everyone. We're here, we're all here. Affected. Coping. Terribly."

"Are we still talking about my daughter's untimely demise or is that just too boring compared to your existential questions?"

"She's right, we've strayed. I'm sorry," said Bucky.

"You're the sorriest fucking demon I've ever seen, I swear to Andraste," lamented Crowley.

"I really don't have time for this," said Hawke curtly.

"Wait," said Bucky, looking at Hawke, then at Murmur, who gave them a slight nod. "Maybe we could find out the truth another way."

"Keep the wrist-cutting as a last resort," added Murmur.

Hawke uncrossed her arms. "I'm listening."

Bucky came next to her, and nodded for her to open the casket. As she did, they gently grabbed her hand, and said: "This is spirit healing magic, but in reverse. You take your hand," they said, and made hers hover over the little girl, "and you will the spirits to undo any recent healing."

"Okay..." she said suspiciously, and concentrated.

Her hand in Bucky's half-lizard hand came alight as it ran across Holly, and... there they were. Blood markings. On her wrists, on her ankles, on her forehead and at the back of her head.

"What the fuck?" Hawke said, her voice trembling. She snatched her hand away protectively, and backed away. "What... what is that?!"

Crowley, Murmur and Ravena came to look as Hawke backed away into the wall, falling. They exchanged worried and ominous looks, then Crowley and Bucky sat down to comfort her. The other two stood behind them looking grim.

"That's... uhm..." tried Bucky, touching her shoulder.

"That was a sacrifice," said Crowley flatly. "Holly was used in a blood sacrifice."

Hawke shook her head rapidly. "That can't be... that's preposterous... why? Who would...? He-he couldn't have..."

Murmur and Ravena came down too.

She sunk her face into her hands for a long time.

The not-demons sat silent and embraced her.