Scene: Set during "Remains of the day." Remember when Bethany left The Hanged Man early, before her sister, who was very drunk? Read on to see who helped her home.

In hindsight, Anders realizes, it was not the best idea to show up at The Hanged Man tonight even though Bethany would only be in town until tomorrow, where she would then return to Ansburg. Everybody had gotten cheerfully drunk—except him. Everybody had been swaying and laughing—except him. After several, overenthusiastic rounds of Diamondback, it was only natural that the group had elected him as the Designated Escort for their de facto leader who, besides himself, had avoided participating in most of the more enjoyable drunken shenanigans. Instead, Hawke had sat in her chair for the better part of the evening, nursing a mug of ale that had been continuously refilled.

And now he is currently trying his damnedest not to slam the door on Hawke's ass as he half-drags her through the doorway of the estate. How does he get into these situations again?

"Ssh, Anders," she whispers too loudly, "you don't want to wake up the entire house."

"Good idea," he adds. "In fact, we should get you to your room."

"I think," Hawke announces slowly, "I can walk from here."

He snorts. "Really. Up the stairs without falling?"

"You don't think I can?"

"Honestly, no."

She widens her eyes at him, head tilted. "Trust me."

It is cocky and reassuring and so typical, all at once, that he wants to believe her and let go to see what could happen. Instead Anders shakes his head, adjusting his grip on her. "Let's get you to your bed."

"Very well, doctor," Hawke concedes and proceeds to trip on the first step. He catches her before she can further humiliate herself.

"Oof," is her eloquent summation, and Anders nods in agreement.

"Right," he decides and scoops her up in his arms.

A few seconds pass while Hawke blinks away her surprise. She then smartly raps his chest with the back of her hand. "You need to eat more."

"And you need to eat less," Anders replies, "Cor, you're heavy."

Hawke hiccups. "Well how else am I supposed to haul around a greatsword?"

"You don't have to." They are halfway up the stairs. "You could take up archery or dueling, like Isabela."

She settles in more comfortably. "That would make quite the picture."

"You holding a skinny little bow? Yes, it would."

"No, I meant dressing like Isabela while dueling."

For laughs, Anders mentally squeezes Hawke into a white corset and gold jewelry only to realize at the last second that she and Isabela both have similar builds and complexions. Unnerved by how well the hypothetical outfit would suit her, he clears his throat. "And here we are. Mind getting the door for me?"

The inebriated warrior obliges, and the two sweep into her room with a flourish.

It is no surprise that Hawke keeps her room plain and tidy, with a water pitcher on the nightstand and her correspondence neatly organized on her writing desk. Stacks of folded clothes sit in a chair next to the wardrobe, ready to be put away. Whatever personal effects that do exist are not for public viewing with the only suggestion that Hawke stays here as a residence and not a guest is the unmade bed in the center. Anders hungrily drinks these details in, having never set foot in her room before.

"Come on," he says at last and carries Hawke the last several yards to deposit her on those messy covers.

"Wait," she murmurs and directs them to the ottoman at the foot of the bed. "I don't want to dirty the sheets, I just washed them. Could you…" And here, she vaguely gestures to her travel-worn clothes, looking up at him expectantly.

"Hawke," Anders begins, stymied. The ends of her hair tickle his neck. He sighs. "Sure." After setting her down carefully, he kneels to pull off a boot while the warrior has both hands braced on his shoulders for support.

Her foot rests solid and warm in his hands, and when he runs his fingers along the edge of her sock, she bucks, nearly nailing him in the face. He glares at Hawke, who has the grace to appear sheepish. "I wasn't expecting that."

Hawke, looking sheepish: not calm, not stately, not Together. Her very expression unnerves him, like he is peeping through a hole into some secret life of hers—another tidbit to hold close at night. The thought rises unbidden, but Anders just as quickly snuffs it out, reminding himself of the argument they had not two days before, deep under the Vinmark Mountains where she looked him square in the eye and denied the tension simmering between them while Bethany slept two bedrolls over. He had chosen to nod and walk away. Despite this new development, tonight will be no different.

With this in mind, he pushes the coat off of her shoulders. "Your arms," he says, and when she can only give a careless shrug instead, he sighs again. In seconds, he works one arm out of its sleeve, then the other. Her head abruptly lolls back, and he cannot resist commenting. "You can't be that drunk."

"I can hold my liquor in public," she quips.

"I was dragging you past your Hightown neighbors," he points out.

"The streets were basically empty."

"Look, is there anything else you want off?"

It takes Hawke a lip-chewing moment to decide. "Gloves."

Anders drops both dirt-encrusted gloves on the floor as she curls her hand over her chest. "My vest," she adds, "it's too tight."

Seriously? Suppressing a groan, he sets to work on the first button while she lifts her head back up to watch. "Thank you…for walking me back."

"Well we couldn't have a recently re-elevated Amell stumbling around Hightown drunk now, could we?"

Hawke chuckles. "As I've said before, I'm not that drunk."

"You haven't shouted at me or gone after my throat even once since we left The Hanged Man." He undoes the last button. "I say, you're drunk."

Anders brings Hawke to her feet, her hands on his arms. Blinking slowly, the smile she wears does not quite reach her eyes. "Maybe I'm just tired."

"Can't argue with that," he replies, steering her to the bed, "seeing as how barely forty-eight hours ago you defeated one of the original Magisters and lived to tell the tale."

She falls on the mattress with a soft thump. "I'd almost forgotten about that."

"Plus the weekly infestations in The Bone Pit—"

"—now you can't see Hubert going there to fix it—"

"—your volunteer patrols with Aveline—"

"—she needs all the help she can get, really—"

"—playing messenger girl between the Viscount and Arishok—"

"—I don't see anyone else willing to—"

"It all adds up eventually," Anders chides gently. "You're wearing yourself thin—"

"Hair," Hawke gasps, and suddenly she's clawing at the sides of her bun. "The hair, please, take it down."

Alarmed, he snaps the twine holding her hair in place, and one by one, her locks tumble out and across the pillow like ink, softening the jut of her sharp chin. "Hawke, what—"

"I am tired," she repeats and covers her face. Something like a chuckle (or is it?) escapes through her hands. "So damn tired."

"Sleep will help—"

A dry, piercing sob silences him. Did he really just hear that? Are his ears working properly? Why hasn't Bethany returned yet? Anders does not remember how to breathe, or how he has come to sit down on the bed next to her shaking form. His hands fidget uselessly at his sides because helping her back home was a terrible idea, the most terrible of ideas.

"I can't even sleep on some nights," she finally whispers. "I just stay up and pretend to wake when Bodahn knocks on my door."

"Hawke," he begins again, and stops, the words dying in his throat.

"And what you told me before about what's in store for Bethany, Maker, she hasn't forgiven me for that yet. Maybe not ever."

His fingers grip the sides of the bed.

"I try really hard to sleep, I do, but I can't stop thinking—just, all this bloody thinking—"

Anders turns, leans over Hawke, and bends down, cupping the back of her head while he presses his nose into the crook of her neck and inhales. "Be quiet, Thomas."

Thomas Hawke does as she is told, and the only sound Anders can hear is the pounding in his chest.

Her hair. Sweet Maker, her hair: curly and thick and rich and soft (so soft) in his fingers that tremble to hold her in his arms that shake to touch her warm brown skin that smells like woods and hearths and dust and hot meals and home. Like he has come home at last to find Thomas waiting for him, heart in hand and laughter in her smile.

He breathes deeply, branding the image in his mind, of a future that can never be. She even told him as much, and yet here he is, crossing lines the both of them had futilely set. What will it take for him to let this—her—go? What will it take?

For a while, neither of them move, but soon he feels a pair of tentative arms wrap themselves around him, and Anders squeezes his eyes shut to pretend that what is happening right now can only be a dream because this cannot be real, no realer than their kiss in the cave all those months ago or their recent heart-to-heart under Corypheus' prison or any of the other infinitesimal moments where they sidestepped each other at the last second to avoid closing the distance between them and acknowledging that this, this—

"Anders."

Her voice, low and husky, is right next to his ear. He grunts softly in response, not trusting himself to raise his head to look at her, too afraid of what he might do.

"The Wardens' Calling—that's what will happen to you too, isn't it?"

No point in mincing truths, but he holds her tighter all the same. "Yes."

"And Bethany's nightmares," she presses, "you also have them."

"Right again."

Her head feels small and fragile in his hand. "Do they get worse?"

"Eventually."

She goes still. Anders counts his heartbeats. And then in tones so hushed he strains to hear, "I see."

The air is too dense, too charged with unspoken meaning that he is suffocating under the weight of it. "Why Hawke," he tries jokingly, "I had no idea you cared."

A pause. Then carefully, Hawke pushes him up, places her hands on his face, and forces him to look at her. Her cheeks are still flushed, her grey eyes too wide, too bright. "Of course I do," she insists in a fierce whisper, "why wouldn't I?"

Before he can answer, she smoothes back the blonde strands plastered to his forehead. "You, Fenris, Aveline, Merrill—you're all important to me."

He exhales. Ah, she means it like that. What other way would she mean it? Trust him to let his mind run away with the things she says. Suddenly, his chest feels too tight to contain him. Leave her be. We have done what the others requested and escorted her home. There is no reason to linger here—Out, get out of my head!

"Hey, are you alright?"

He mentally resurfaces to find her staring nose-to-nose at him, with only a hair's breadth of space between each other's mouths. He can feel each breath she takes. Swallowing hard, Anders nods. Hawke nods back, brow furrowed. "Was it Justice?" When he doesn't reply, she sighs. "I know he doesn't like me."

"Not at all," he confirms with a shaky laugh. "But it doesn't matter what he thinks." None of it matters: not your stance on mages, not the company you keep, not my own issues like being a free mage sharing headspace with a spirit in Kirkwall in addition to Grey Warden status, not anything. I'd walk away from it all if you asked me to because I'm already fool enough to walk you home while you're drunk and honest with your hands on my face and your hair (your hair!) on the pillow when I didn't even have to be nice to you because after all, I'm not really your friend, just this stranger you decided to keep around for Makers knows what—

Hawke puts a finger to his lips. "Be quiet, Anders."

He closes his eyes, blood caught on fire. She's drunk. She's drunk. I'm not. This isn't right. His mind recalls the image of her slowly shaking her head at him forty-eight hours before. 'We're not right, Anders.' There is no way she could have known the emotional tailspin she had sent him in afterwards. They had walked back to Kirkwall with Varric and Bethany between them as a buffer, chattering the whole earlier tonight at the Hanged Man they did not exchange a single word, both stubbornly holding on to their drink in silence while the other companions' clamor sounded around them.

Anders opens his eyes to see her wearing a puzzled smile: watching, waiting. "Silly me. Was I thinking out loud again?" he says hoarsely.

Hawke gives a little shrug. "Don't worry about it. It's cute."

Inwardly cursing, he takes her hand and presses her broad palm to his mouth, his fingers curling over hers. "A bad habit of mine, I'm afraid," he mumbles on her skin. Not baby-smooth like those of the noblewomen she now often finds herself in the company of, but rough and calloused, strong and experienced—warm, open, and hers.

"You do tend to do that," she points out, smirking, "all that thinking. All that brooding."

He arranges her hand so that it cups his face, and he cannot help leaning into its touch. "Some nights I don't sleep either." A bald-faced lie, naturally. Most nights he does not sleep.

"Oh." A beat. "Your nightmares."

"Mostly," Anders confirms, and before he can think about it, "sometimes it's you."

"Me?"

No response. He mentally berates himself for once again laying himself bare in front of Hawke. What does it matter, she won't remember this in the morning or if she does, she won't ever mention it. Sweep everything under the rug, that's her. Suddenly decisive, Anders drops her hand and moves to rise. "It's late, and I need to leave. Come find me in the morning if you want something for that hangover."

When she does nothing to stop him, his chest twists even more, releasing a breath that propels him out of the bed and across the room to the door, where his hand is on the doorknob, and then just like that he has completely exited the building. He takes long, rapid strides back to Darktown, his nails digging crescent-shaped marks into his palms.

What he misses is Hawke lying motionless in bed, sobriety creeping around the edges of her mind as she tilts her hand this way and that, watching the candlelight cast shadows on the fingers that held his face.

"Me too," she sighs. "Me too."