"Your face is swollen, Hawke." She did not look up, just went on flipping through the newspaper on the table.

"It's fine." Without tearing her attention away, she reached for the mug of coffee beside her. Orsino leaned over to push it towards her groping hand, giving her the chance to stick her fingers into it with a hiss before finding the handle.

"It's puffy," he insisted. Hawke huffed and cast an annoyed look at him. "Scowl all you want, you're only doing it with half your face."

"Fiiiiiine I'll go see Anders," she griped. "I'm telling him you made me go."

"You say that like he won't be on my side." Another peeved look sent his way—he went on drinking his coffee and picking over his breakfast sausages in peace.

"That asshole, he will be," she said. "Never any shortage of complaints about my job." Despite this little squabble, she saw him off to work in a flurry of kisses and grabby hands, so that it was very tempting to call in sick. If Hawke had not needed to be down at the docks, he might have done it—let Meredith rage all she wanted. She couldn't recall him to the Circle for taking sick days.

"When will you be home?" he asked.

"Should be off by five," she said brightly. "I'll insist, anyway. We've got more the chicken for dinner and we'll, I don't know, watch a movie or something." Another kiss, and he finally extracted himself from her to get to the school.

Hawke kept her word and drove early into town to stop by the clinic. The old lobby, a decorative relic of some thirty years ago, was mostly empty but for a few seniors about for check-ups.

"Hello, Hawke," the receptionist greeted her. "Ouch. In for that cut?"

"Yeah, yeah, I've been bullied into it," she said. "Does Anders have anything open? I'm supposed to be at work in like…two hours."

"Yes, I think we can fit you in," she replied. "Dr. Anders always has time for you."

"Hawke?" She turned away from twirling a pen around while she was checked in to see a familiar face.

"Gamlen? What are you doing here?" She leaned back against the counter with a grin that she immediately regretted. Damn—Orsino was right. Her cheek ached from the brief stretch.

Uncle Gamlen looked older every time she saw him—which was how time worked, but it was still odd to see when so much of the town was perpetually unchanging, frozen in some outdated place in time. Strange too, to think of Gamlen growing old. Like the town, Hawke's family were perpetually locked in an unchanging state—Carver and Bethany would never become adults, Mother and Father would never grow old and feeble. She and Gamlen were the only ones still changing. Gamlen had his faults, but he was her only remaining family, alongside her cousin. She tried to check in, but neither of them were very good at it. He'd done better with Leandra.

"Could ask you the same question, but it looks like it's written across your face," he said. "It's a back thing. When did you get into port? Never have time to visit, do you?"

"Relax, uncle," Hawke said. "I only got in the day before yesterday. I'll come see you later this week."

"You know, if you need someone to watch the house, the girl can manage," he said. Hawke sighed inwardly and averted her eyes. The constant assumption that she did not know what she was doing with her love life got old, especially from certain parties who were particularly disapproving of her choices. Charade would do a decent job, surely, but she and Hawke had never had much of a chance to get close, and she had enough going on with Gamlen's problems without adding Hawke's to the pile.

"I don't, but if I did, I'd ask Charade," she said.

"I just mean that—"

"I know what you mean, uncle," Hawke interrupted. "I don't need anyone to watch the house. And I'll be in port for a month, so I'll take care of anything that needs taking care of while I'm here."

"No need to get snippy," Gamlen groused, slouching back into his seat. Hawke just rolled her eyes and went back to playing with reception's pens until Anders called her back.

"Hawke! You are back in town," he said, as if he hadn't quite believed it when the receptionist told him. "What happened to your face?"

"Is that how everyone's going to greet me? I'll tell you, it was a wyvern," she said as she followed him into the examination room. "How've you been? Business looks robust as always."

"It never ends," Anders said, shaking his head. "There's always someone who needs help. It's good work, though."

"Holding up okay? I know everyone depends on you for a lot," she said.

"I don't know what I'd do with myself anymore if I wasn't doing this," he said. "What about you? Strange to see you in here over something not immediately life-threatening." The look he gave her was both reprimanding and fond. As much as he disapproved of Hawke's antics, he knew he could not dissuade her, and a part of him seemed to admire her resilience.

His examination room had the same out-of-time look as the lobby, although it was well-stocked, Anders saw to that. He was a general practitioner, but as the only legitimate doctor in the town, he filled a lot of roles. There weren't many doctors who would resign themselves to a life out in Minerva, but Anders seemed to have found his place there—which was precisely why although most everyone knew he was an unregistered mage, no one had yet reported him, not even the enchanter.

"I was bullied," she said. Anders snorted.

"By what, a dragon?" He made her go through the standard check-up things first—heartbeat and pulse and reflexes—which he insisted was necessary given how often she was out at sea and away from regular care. He also made no secret of the fact that he thought the only reason she came as often as she did was due to their friendship. Hawke didn't deny it. "The first enchanter must be in a good mood," Anders muttered as he pressed his stethoscope to her back.

"Don't start that," Hawke said wearily.

"I'm just saying," he said.

"You're implying," she disagreed.

"Implying what? What do you think I was implying?"

"Don't be an ass," Hawke instructed, breathing deeply as he directed. "You knew this was going to happen someday, Anders." As cherished a friend as he might be, Anders seemed determined to make sure he capped Hawke's list of most-regretted high school romances.

"That's not true," he said. "And I just think you have better options."

"What, you?"

"Not necessarily," he defended himself. "There are plenty of options for you here. I don't see what you see in him."

"You don't have to see," she said. "I do. Why don't you go join Uncle Gamlen and Varric and have a book group discussion about why you all disapprove of my choices."

"You said it wasn't serious." Anders spoke nearly under his breath as he tilted her face up to look at the cut. "How did you get this?"

"It wasn't," she said. "A bit of rigging hit me in the face during a squall. I've been keeping it clean but it's gotten all puffy."

"Is it now?" He tipped her chin from side to side, examining the cut. "I'm going to press on it a little, okay? Tell me how much this hurts." Gently, he pressed a finger against the cut and Hawke hissed quietly.

"Is it oozing?" Then: "I don't know. It's not what it was before."

"No. It might, if I press more, but I won't do that now. How is the pain? Is it localized around the cut, or is it spreading? Do you feel it around here?" He touched her neck and jaw. "If it's not serious, you might want to tell Orsino that."

"Now what the hell's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, pulling away from him.

"He just seems pretty serious about it, is all." Anders had that affronted look, like she was being unreasonable by getting irritated.

"Glad to know you all have put together a report analysis of my relationship while I've been out." She clenched her jaw, looking over at the magazine rack, and resisted Anders' attempts to turn her face back towards the light.

"The pain?"

"It's just around the cut." Her tone had gone sullen.

"Good." After scribbling down some notes, he tore off a bit of paper and handed it over to her. "An antibacterial cream should help you keep it clean. Have you gone to see Varric since you've been back?" The question was posed tentatively, knowing he had pushed it with the questioning about Orsino.

"Not yet, I just got in the other day," she said.

"He wanted to have a wicked grace night when you got back," Anders said. "You in?"

"Of course," she said, the sour look relaxing off her face. "You know it."

"I think our dearest devoutest chantry brother wrote the details down somewhere," he said, and Hawke did not respond to the latent hostility in the goody-goody tone he used to refer to Sebastian. She was pretty used to Anders not getting along with…well, anyone. He dug out a bit of gauze and tape to bandage the cut. "Keep this covered as much as you can, especially after you put the cream on it."

"Right, I'll see if I can stop by there too. Maker strike me down if I miss wicked grace night."

"It's good to see you again, Hawke," Anders told her, the sincerity on his face untouched by the earlier bout of envy. "Glad you're mostly in one piece."

"All in one piece!" she disagreed, hopping down from the bench. "This is just a flesh wound!" She said goodbye to Anders, and since she'd already gone through the trouble of leaving the house, swung by the Golden Halla café, where Merrill could often be found nursing a cup of tea, with her nose buried in a book on some obscure, ancient magics. Merrill, blessedly, never asked about Hawke's love-life, which put her a cut above the rest, in Hawke's mind—and that was even counting their little dalliance years back. Shame Anders didn't have the same capacity to maintain civility.

"Golden Halla" was a grand name for what amounted to little more than a museum of cracked wallpaper, a handful of wobbly plastic tables, and a window that had smashed in a storm approximately seven years ago, but remained held together primarily with packing tape. It was in the part of town Mom would have once warned her to steer clear of, which had only ever increased Hawke's interest in being there. Not to mention, it was where all of her friends lived—Mom's perpetual chagrin had been that Hawke never made new, Hightown friends after they moved. Certainly that she never found a nice, well-to-do Hightown partner. Trying to imagine what her mother would say to her present choices on that front was equal parts amusing, and cringeworthy.

"Hey, Daisy." Hawke dropped down into the seat across from Merrill, and reached across to chug a sip of her friend's tea. "Oh, nasty. Don't you ever use sugar?"

"It spoils the taste," Merrill hummed absently, not lowering her book. Hawke sat in silence while Merrill finished whatever page or paragraph she was on, then lowered the book, her bright eyes comically wide, exclaiming: "Hawke! You're back!"

Hawke grinned, a bit harder since Anders had taped a bit of gauze over the ugly cut on her face, and Merrill frowned, seeing the wound.

"What happened?"

"I punched a kraken in the nose," she replied.

"Do krakens have noses?"

"This one did." Merrill posed a few questions about Hawke's most recent voyage, and Hawke asked about the clan, and then Merrill asked:

"Have you been to see Varric?"

"Not yet; haven't been by the Hanged Man. Anders says he wants to get wicked grace night together again."

"Mhm. He misses you a lot when you're gone." Hawke picked at a gouge in the tabletop.

"Yeah. I've been hearing that a bit." Merrill never said these things to upset her, but sometimes the elf had a way of speaking truth so bluntly that it made Hawke feel guilty. That was Theodora Hawke: always absent when she was needed. Never there to solve the problem, only to clean up the aftermath. No one on whom to rely (so why did her friends keep having faith in her?).

"He'll be glad to see you! Oh, if you wait for me to finish my tea, I'll come with you! If that's alright. If you'd rather it just be the two of you, I understand."

"Of course not. Varric will want to see you too," Hawke said. "I think I have time to stop by before I have to be at the dock." There had been a time when Merrill felt the need to fill any silence between them with chatter, however inane, but they seemed to have gotten past that, and she didn't mind letting Hawke just sit there quietly with her while she drank her tea.

"How's Orsino?" There was no one else who could have posed that question without Hawke assuming they had ulterior motives—namely, expressing their disapproval.

"Fine," she said with a shrug. "Bullied me into going to see Anders this morning." Merrill laughed.

"I didn't think anyone could bully you, Hawke!"

"Ah, he was probably right," Hawke grumbled, sliding down in her seat, kicking her boots up on the edge of the heel. "Anders says I have to come back if the swelling doesn't go down in a few days."

"He's right about that, you don't want it to be infected," Merrill said. She knocked back the rest of her tea and bounced to her feet. "Ready to go?" Hawke rolled up out of her seat, a smile twitching on her lips. Homecoming never felt complete until she'd been by the Hanged Man and seen her favorite dwarf.

"Say, are they still running fights down there?"

"Oh, Hawke, no…"