The first thing Anders felt when he woke was pain that rained in big angry drops down onto an acutely angled hand. It was asleep, begging his body desperately for access to oxygenated blood. He pulled it out from under his leg and shook it frantically, massaging the feeling back into his fingers as he turned his head to search through the darkness around him.

The next thing he felt was the aching everywhere. Crammed into a small space and sleeping so deeply that he hadn't moved an inch for hours, had left him with stiff, seized up limbs that barely responded to his commands to move. He tried to push his legs out, and when his feet banged against a wall, he pushed himself back toward the wall behind him.

And then finally, he felt her. She was soft and warm and smelled like a garden after a rainstorm, and she groaned in pain when Anders inadvertently kicked her in his desperate flailing to restore blood flow to his limbs.

And then he froze, still feeling slightly sleep drunk and thoroughly confused. For a moment he was thrust back in time to the torture that was his year of solitary confinement after his last escape from the Circle. His heart began to race at the memory, but even in that cell he could completely extend his legs.

The only thing that stemmed the anxiety that was blazing up his spine was her. There must be a reason he was stuck inside a small, completely dark room if she was there with him, he figured. He blinked into the blackness, waiting for his eyes to adjust, trying to find darker shadows within the depths, but they found nothing.

He turned toward Selise and reached out a cautious hand, waving around gently and trying to be careful of what his hand landed upon, but he only touched air. After adjusting his trajectory downward, his fingertips connected with her stomach and he let his hand settle fully upon her, sliding around to her side and giving a gentle shake.

It was then that he realized that her head was resting on his shoulder and tendrils of her wild hair were tickling his neck. She had an arm squeezed between his waist and the wall behind them, and her legs were resting directly against his. She'd been breathing the deep, slow breaths of slumber but now she stirred, pulled out of sleep by the flailing foot that had connected harshly with her calf. As soon as he had the presence of mind to, he reached toward her feet, running indiscriminate waves of healing energy over her legs. And then he did the same for himself, trying to ease the stiffness and aching of his complaining muscles. But while his limbs needed blood, their lack of actual injury meant the healing energy did little to help, and the cramping continued.

Feeling the desperation of his cells crying out, he scrambled to a stand, feeling gravity help the circulation back down to his feet. The surface in front of him that he laid his hand on was old, heavy wood and as he felt around his hand passed over the handle that identified it as a door. Instinctively he turned the handle, feeling the little click that indicated that the door was not locked, but then stopped himself, remembering again that there must be a reason they were there.

"Selise," he whispered, and after another second of letting the blood open up the clogged vessels in his feet, he crouched back down and put his hands out, running into her moving arms. She was still in her own slow process of waking and stretching and he hovered there to wait for her.

He felt a warm hand connect with his leg and he reached for it, moving up her arms to help pull her to a stand. She groaned as her legs extended underneath her, clearly feeling the same aching that he was.

She stumbled a little and he caught her, grasping at her ribs and helping her to steady herself. Even in the dark, even half asleep and aching, he still felt himself drawn to move in closer. His nose filled with her delicate scent and he knew that her face, her neck, all of her body hovered just before him in the pitch black, possibly only centimeters away.

"Anders?" she asked quietly and raised a hand to his face, sliding tenderly over his cheek to where his jaw angled up toward his ear. It was the first time she had touched him like that, with such deliberate affection, and his heart leapt at what it might mean. He leaned into her touch and closed his eyes.

"Yes," he answered. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I'm fine. Just had to do a little creative problem solving," she said in a low whisper. "And you?"

"A little sore, but… I'm good," he responded breathlessly, wanting to turn and nuzzle into her hand.

Her fingers slid down his jaw, running briefly along the skin of his neck but then dropped away, leaving him to hang unsupported before her, his skin searing in the absence of her touch. He heard her relieved exhale as she seemed to get her bearings.

She scooted around him toward the door and cracked it a sliver, just enough to peek an eye through. After a moment of stillness, she opened it fully and took a tentative step out, looking up and down the battlements. She turned to wave him out, and as his eyes fell upon the top of the stairs several yard away, the memory of what had happened came rushing back.

He had recognized the guard too. It was a man who had cast him a few curious glances on the journey to Skyhold, but nothing more. Most of those soldiers had been kept in the dark, given a fabricated story about the cloaked figure they were escorting. Only two of them, agents of the Nightingale, knew the truth about who he was but they never acknowledged it and he hadn't seen them again since his arrival. But his face was well known among Thedas, among assassins and opportunists looking to collect the bounty that Sebastian had placed on his head. It was only a matter of time before someone here recognized him. It happened every where he'd gone, ever since the day he'd mounted his horse and rode hard away from the city that he had sent crumbling.

But his memory went blank beyond the point of seeing the man sneer.

The sky was a deep, moonless black and there was a new chill in the air that he hadn't felt since his arrival in Skyhold. Everywhere else in the south of Thedas it was approaching the autumn equinox. He wondered if the magic imbued within the rocks of their fortress would insulate it from the seasons the way it did from the surrounding mountain ice, or if they could expect to see a cold winter.

The hour must have been very late, he observed. Not a single thing in Skyhold stirred as Selise led him down the path toward a door and then peeked inside. He couldn't help but run his eyes over every inch of her as she cut through the night ahead of him. The black hair gathered up on the back of her head was wilder than ever, snaking dark curls over the back of her pale, slender neck. She had her shoulders thrown back and walked lightly on the balls of her feet. He synced himself to her steps and together they moved, tiptoeing deftly across a balcony and down stairs, traveling the length of the Great Hall and then descended the stairwell that led to their lower floor, where she finally slowed, stopping in the dark.

Anders pushed a flame onto the wick of a nearby lantern, then turned toward her, feeling the little bolt in his gut as he met her large, clear eyes.

"What happened to that guard?" he asked.

"He's dead," she answered simply, her face flashing something dark and conflicted. Somehow she appeared even paler than usual, her posture betraying a heaviness that made Anders want to take her in his arms and comfort her. But before he had the chance, she turned on her heel and staggered as quickly as she could toward the washroom. He stared numbly after her for a second, confused, and then followed her down the hall as she disappeared, closing the washroom door behind her. He immediately heard the sounds of her retching, and unable to think of anything else to do, went to the kitchen to fill a large glass with water, and then returned to wait at the door.

What in the Void had happened last night, he wondered worriedly. He recalled the thing the man had said just before his memory went blank… he called her a piece of ass. Just the thought of that bit was enough to make his blood boil all over again. His stomach became a painful jumble of nerves as his imagination ran wild, trying to fill in all the gaps in his memory. Did she kill the man herself? Or had something else happened too? Had Justice emerged? Or Vengeance? Had Vengeance hurt her? Scared her? She was alive, unhurt, and so was he, at least besides the lingering soreness in his muscles from the closet, so if Vengeance was the culprit, it was still a hell of a lot better an outcome than what there had been in the past. Sometimes he retained awareness of what was happening while the spirit was in control, sometimes all he was left with was a chunk of missing time. Maybe this had been the latter.

The memories of Hawke flashed through his mind, of the moment he came to in a pitch black, completely silent cave with only the vague memory of Vengeance's emergence. When he put his hands to the ground to push himself to a stand he almost slipped in a large pool of sticky blood. The ball of illumination that he conjured up with the remains of his depleted mana only allowed him to see several steps ahead. The cave was littered with bodies, including two bearing the distinctive symbol of the Seekers. After stumbling through pile after pile of mangled corpses, he finally came upon Hawke's boots, and as he moved the light up her legs he saw the jagged gleam of protruding bones, and her head laying at an unnatural angle, and then her dead eyes open and staring right into him.

He'd heard his own terrified scream echo through the cave and the light in his hand died as he scooped her up into his arms, but his body was too wracked with sobs to stand or try to move her. She was gone, no trace of breath or pulse left. It felt like hours until he had finally been able to calm himself enough that he could pick her up, feeling his arm depress into her rib cage in a way that it should not have. He carried her to the cave entrance, pulling her step by step through the small tunnel that emerged out from under a low hill. He used the last of the daylight to find a spot to camp and build a fire, and then downed every lyrium vial they had both brought along, until his body was quaking with excessively amplified mana. He tried every healing spell he knew, putting as much force behind them as he could muster, going beyond the limits of his magic and pouring into it his own life's energy, and somehow, something he did worked. The next morning she woke, though he was depleted down to his very last cell and could barely bring himself to move for almost a week afterward.

He shuddered, tears springing up behind his eyes as an errant imagining of Selise lying broken and lifeless flashed through his mind.

The second time Hawke faced Vengeance is when he ended up broken himself.

He could not allow anything like that to ever happen again.

He shook the memories out of his head and reminded himself that the fact remained that he did not really know what happened. He didn't feel drained at all the way he normally did when Vengeance paid a visit, but he also knew he had slept for many hours.

He waited by the door, hoping that when she was better, she would finally tell him what had happened.

He almost felt hopeful that whatever had happened last night did involve Vengeance. If it had, and they were both fine besides a bout of nausea, then that was better than anything he had ever dared wish for.

Finally the door opened and there she stood, looking weary and disheveled, with her hair loosed from its binding so that it fell down her back and shoulders in large, tangled waves. Despite the purple bags under her eyes, despite the greyish tone to her skin, Anders felt his breath catch in his throat.

"Tell me what I can do to help," he told her as he handed her the glass of water. She took it gratefully, emptying it seconds.

Then she motioned for him to follow as she retreated back toward their quarters. She went straight for his door, and then waited for him to close the distance with the lantern. She was carrying her boots in one arm, her feet bare as was her habit whenever they were on the lower floor, and she entered his room and used her free hand to grab the bottle of whiskey off his bureau, and then turned to push him back out of the doorway. She handed him the bottle, then took his free hand and led him over to her door, giving him an unexpectedly warm look. He felt the shiver in his stomach intensify, making him feel light and slightly dizzy.

She closed the door behind them and dropped her boots, then took the bottle from him to gulp a deep swig out of the bottle of whiskey.

"Was it Vengeance?" he asked finally, "last night?"

"What?" she asked in surprise, "no. No, not Vengeance."

At that Anders felt both relieved and disappointed, and he reached for the bottle himself. Selise dropped herself into a chair at her table and brought her hands up to squeeze her brow.

"Entropics drain life," she said with a distant voice, "and that is what I did. But to be honest, I'd much rather just stick them in the gut with a sword. It's so much less… intimate."

"I'm sorry you had to do that," he said softly.

"It's unbelievably sickening to have to listen to very last breath and heartbeat as they fade away," she continued.

"I can imagine that would be true," he felt a profound swell of sympathy as he stood there and watched her look down at the tabletop, her fingers pressing and kneading at her forehead.

"I wish you had let me kill him. I would have." He said as he joined her at the table, pulling the second chair around so that he sat close.

"You were about to draw a whole bunch of attention to yourself. To us." she answered. "A destruction attack would have been seen and heard through the entirety of Skyhold, Anders. I had to put you both to sleep to prevent you from being discovered."

"Right. I didn't even think about that."

"You need to think about things like that," she said tiredly, as she took another drink.

"I know, I'm sorry," he said softly, and then reached for her hand. It was cool and clammy, still damp from washing herself up after getting sick. She clasped his in return and held it tightly.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She met his eyes with a deep, sad stare and she didn't have to say that she wasn't. He could feel the pain in her, reflecting itself outward in the mirror of her eyes.

"I haven't drained a man in a very long time," she said sadly. "It took me right back to being in one of those rooms with my father… I always wished I'd never have to do that ever again."

Unable to help himself, Anders slid his chair closer again, so that this time it thumped right up against hers. He leaned in and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in and resting her in the nook of his body. He again had to fight his imagination, shutting it down before it painted pictures for him of a Templar monster forcing his daughter to help him torture one of her own. He clenched his teeth and looked around, trying to bring himself out of his mind. He picked up the bottle of whiskey and threw back another large gulp.

He finally relaxed back into the moment when he felt her nestle in close to him, sliding an arm around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. He exhaled a deep sigh at finally being able to hold her the way he'd been longing to for days now. He closed his eyes and reveled in her warmth, in the solidness and realness of her body, of the rarity of actual human contact. After years on the run, years of hiding and enduring long, cold, lonely night after night where all he had were his memories and his imagination to keep him warm, he was a man starved. Ravished and ravenous for someone's touch. He hoped she didn't try to pull away, because he wasn't sure he'd be able to make himself let her go.

She took a deep shuddering breath, sounding much more contented.

It had been great to see Hawke. She looked much more peaceful than she did when they both lived in Kirkwall. She had always been wired with a high-strung, restless energy then, always needing to move. But out on the battlements she had an almost unrecognizable aura of calm, and he could see in her eyes that the years since Kirkwall had been kind to her. He thought he would leave there feeling lonelier than ever, but was shocked to find that walking away from Hawke was easy. Hawke was happy, and he knew that he would never have the same fears for Selise that he'd had for her. Selise was uniquely equipped to handle him, in a way that no other woman could ever be. Even if all she ever was was his Keeper, he felt safe with her, but more importantly, he felt that she was safe with him.

The conversation that followed as they walked back to Skyhold only cemented in the decision that he had already made in his heart. And now she was finally there in his arms. He pressed his nose into her silky hair and rested his lips against her.

She did pull away from him eventually, leaving a cold empty gap where her body had been. And she stood to cross the room, pulling off her heavy mage robe to lay it across the chair. She had a light sleeveless shirt and leggings on underneath, and Anders had to tear his eyes away from the revealing of her gentle curves and milky arms. He took half of the remaining whiskey in a single gulp and left the rest for her, feeling the welcome loosening of the liquor begin to take effect. He almost didn't hear her when she crossed back over to the table and emptied the bottle completely. And then he felt her warm touch on him again as she picked up his hand and pulled him to a stand, moving in close to rest her forehead on his chest and wrap her hands around his waist.

"Will you stay with me tonight?" she asked him quietly. Once the meaning of the words registered as reality, he felt himself almost break down, but he held himself together enough to whisper a shaky yes. He tried to steady his breathing, knowing that she was right up against him and could hear how disturbed it had become. But when she raised her head and looked into his face and he knew she had felt it. She had probably also felt his racing heart. He swallowed heavily and felt his eyes glaze over at the beauty of the face that was looking right into him.

She reached a hand up to caress his face, the same as she had done in the closet and Anders heard a whimper escape from his throat at her touch, and he leaned into it again. He took a few more deep breaths and tried to calm himself. She was just looking at him, her eyes soft, her pupils dilated wide. Her silky fingers ran over the skin of his cheek, working their way back to thread within his hair. He realized that he was gripping her waist very tightly and he tried to relax his hands.

"You're vibrating," she said softly as she traced her fingertips lightly down his neck, stopping at the base of his throat just above the collar of his coat. He hadn't noticed it happening, but the energy of his magic had been building up along with the tension of his body, and now it was thrumming just under his skin, collecting and pooling, preparing itself to be unleashed. He felt an electric charge filling his fingertips and before he could stop it, a slight zap emerged between his hand and her waist. She gave a slight jump, and then a small, amused smile.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's okay. It didn't hurt," she said softly.

And then she moved her lips toward his, brushing them softly against his mouth. He wanted to dive in and kiss her with all the need and passion that was raging through him, he wanted to consume her completely, but he held back, letting their lips feel each other in soft, gentle strokes. And then finally she pressed her mouth harder to his and he opened, tilting his head slightly so he could capture her lips in his own, sucking gently and sliding his tongue along hers. His arms closed fully around her body, bringing her flush against him and running over her back, her waist, her shoulders, sliding up to cup her head and tangle themselves in her fragrant hair. He felt her grow stronger in his arms as she pressed back, pulling him hard to her and exploring him with her impossibly sensual touch.

She ended the kiss with a small nibble on his bottom lip and when he let out the breath he'd been holding, he felt like he was exhaling four years worth of tension. But the kiss had only fired up the ache within him, making him feel desperate for more.

"What about… your assignment? Your employers?" he whispered breathlessly.

"I don't care about them anymore," she answered. "I'm…not convinced they have your best interests at heart."

He looked deeply into her. What could that possibly mean? She had been markedly different since her last meeting with Fiona and the Nightingale.

"Is it okay if we just sleep? I… I'm still very tired" she asked.

"Whatever you need," he whispered he said as he smoothed her hair out of her face, "I'm happy just to be here."

She pulled away and went to the bed, pulling the blankets down and blowing out the lantern. Anders quickly shed his robe and boots, and then removed his shirt, leaving on only a loose pair of breeches. He climbed into bed after her, and she settled herself against him. He sank down into the mattress, letting out a low groan as they intertwined limbs and her body pressed again his. Her head came to rest in the little nook below his neck, and he felt a deep, peaceful comfort fall over him. He whispered a small thank you to the Maker that he wouldn't be tossing and turning alone in his room for yet another night, unable to purge from his mind the longing for the girl who rested just on the other side of his wall.

"You really thought Vengeance came out last night?" she whispered.

"I was afraid that's what had happened… and thought that since you were okay, that maybe it was true that you could control him too. I think that maybe I got my hopes up a little bit," he responded.

"Well, I do think we should… test it." she said.

"Test it?"

"Yes. Lure him out and see if I can put him back down."

"I don't know," he said nervously, "That would be too big of a risk. If anything were to happen to you I wouldn't be able to take it."

She was quiet a moment, and then continued. "Then we'd need to figure out a way to make sure nothing can happen. This is a fortress… there has to be holding cells here somewhere. We could lock you in one, while I stay on the other side of the bars. And then we'll just….see."

Anders considered that for a moment. It was an interesting proposition. "Bars won't stop destruction spells," he said.

"Could we…. Drain your mana somehow first? Not give him much to work with?"

"Perhaps… But what if you still can't stop him?"

"Then I would pull back and just wait until you turn back into you."

"What if I'm not back before all my mana is?"

"Then I guess I'll have to think on my feet," she said. "Anders, don't you want to know?"

"Of course I do, but I can't put you at risk like that! On purpose?"

"But what if I can stop him? What if you never have to worry about Vengeance hurting anyone innocent again?"

Anders was silent for a moment. The prospect was profoundly enticing, but no matter how many years it had been, he couldn't shake the image of Hawke's dead eyes looking back at him. Was that really worth the risk? And he would only be safe for as long as they were together. What about when the time came for him to leave Skyhold? What if she didn't want to go with him? Then he'd be right back to square one anyway.

"Well," he began, "that sort of implies you'll always be around," he said.

He felt her head lift, her hand reaching up to pull his face close to her again.

"Do you want me around?" she asked.

"More than I know how to say," he whispered as he tightened his embrace again, savoring the warmth of her body against him, of the clean, earthy scent that was filling his lungs and his soul.

"Good," she said gently as she let her lips find his again and she held his mouth in a soft kiss, but she broke away again.

"What lures him out then? Is it only seeing mages get mistreated by Templars?"

"Mostly. There have been a few other triggers… "

"Like?" she asked.

"Things that have enraged me my whole life that I had always been powerless to do anything about."

"You can't think of anything specific?"

"Um…"he laughed, "it's tough being put on the spot."

"Well I guess you'll have to think on that. Figure out something we can replicate easily."

"Yes, I guess I can try. That is really going to be the tough part, I think," he answered, but he couldn't deny he was feeling a nervous measure of excitement.

"Let's do it," she said sleepily, as she settled back down into him and let her heavy eyelids close.

The sky outside the window had turned from deep black to the dark blue of early morning, and Anders didn't feel the need for more sleep. He was happy to lay there awake, savoring the sensations of her body against his. He brought a hand up to gently caressed her face and her brow as she slid off into a deep sleep.