They are starting to burn the dead. Even the sweet herbs that are added to the fires cannot disguise the sickly sweet odor that assails them as she and Anders emerge from the interior darkness of the circle. Hawke lifts her left hand to shade her eyes as they walk out into the gallows courtyard, the new sun as it rises, glinting painfully off the grotesque statues the Tevinters had placed there so long ago. As word spreads of the battle the townspeople come searching for their loved ones, hoping that their son or daughter, husband or wife had been spared in the fighting but there will be more shocked grieving here today than joyous reunions.

Her remaining companions follow quietly behind her as she looks over the rows of dead for those who are still missing. It is a daunting task as there are hundreds of bodies being carried out into the dawn, this new day that so many of their numbers had not lived to see. Hawke has not seen her sister since the fighting started, and she bites down panic every time she sees a dark haired mage laying there half shrouded in the courtyard, fearing that it will be Bethany. She does not know what she will do if fate has been cruel enough to take yet another family member from her.

Varric had been easy enough to find, they had come upon him pleading with a mage to magically mend a wicked looking gash in Bianca in much the same way a parent would plead for medical treatment of their child. He looked almost close to tears as the healer turned him away.

"We need to find the others and quickly gather what supplies we can" she told him as he rejoined their party.

They found Aveline next, the flame red hair being easy to spot in the crowd of survivors. Hawke was glad to see that Donnic was beside her, it would have been cruel fate indeed if her friend had to endure the loss of another husband to the enemy's sword, just when she was beginning to find happiness again.

Fenris had departed before the final battle, the disgust on his face clearly evident when Hawke vowed she would help defend the mages. She did not blame him for leaving, he had suffered so much at the hands of mages, and she hoped that wherever he would go next he would find some sort of closure for the heavy scars he carried in his heart. They cannot find Merrill in the growing confusion of the crowd, but Anders is certain he had seen the petite elf after the battle among the mages that were healing the wounded.

Hawke forces herself to move closer to the intensely burning pyres, and reluctantly she turns her eyes to the pile of bodies there. She knows deep down that if her sister is indeed among the dead, she may never get to say a final goodbye. There are so many of the fallen, there is no other choice except to cremate them all like this. She glances back at Anders where he stands, pale and withdrawn at the back of their small group,his eyes desperately trying not to take in all the carnage that surrounds them. For a moment she is all too aware of the fact that he had come so close to being tossed on this pile with all the other dead, that she had come so very close to losing him. She winces as a little voice inside her mind sneers It would serve him right, all this is of his making. She wonders if this is what it felt like for Anders when he took Justice into his soul.

There seemed to be two parts of her now, as if love and hate had been sundered in half the moment the realization of what he had done had dawned on her. The two halves of her tortured mind vacillating between wanting to run into his warm embrace one moment and an almost uncontrollable urge to plunge her sword into his lying heart the next. She shakes the thought off as she tries to focus on what has to be done. They are wasting time here. If Bethany is still alive, hopefully she can get word to her somehow, but they need to leave Kirkwall now if she is to get Anders and the rest of her party to safety before more Templars come looking to avenge their Commander. She wonders if this new nightmare will ever end, if in her choice to stand by him she has condemned herself to wandering without a home for the rest of her life. She fervently hopes it will not be so.