Life went on.

Hawke took the news of Bethany's departure to the Wardens back to his mother and Gamlen. Leandra took it about as well as could be expected. The thought that her daughter was still alive was little consolation to a mother who had already buried one child and her husband. Gamlen at least said nothing for once.

Life for Anders didn't go on quite as it had before; his magic had returned, after all, and it grew stronger day by day. But nor did it return to how it had been before he had lost his magic either. His work now was both healing and alchemy; his healing work now included much he had discovered and developed with alchemy - new potions and treatments. And in turn, his alchemical research was also augmented further by his magic. His mornings were given to research; afternoons to healing - though he never turned anyone away if they knocked before the lanterns were lit.

He continued to wear an eyepatch; the lyrium eye saw through it, after all, and Anders felt he preferred to avoid awkward questions about it. If his patients were ever curious about it, they never asked. Word slowly got out that the healer's magic had returned - though not where templar ears might hear. Anders was more sparing of his magic than he might once have been; he tired more easily these days, and taking lyrium was no longer an option. He was almost painfully cautious with the liquid in his experiments now.

Varric had managed to get hold of further interesting books for Anders; the blond apostate didn't dare ask Varric just how he managed to get hold of the texts - advanced papers on alchemy and magical theory from Tevinter that would have meant death to any mage caught with them in their possession if the templars caught them. They'd burn him at the stake and use the books for the kindling if they caught him - nothing so clean as a hanging or Tranquility for such a transgression as this. But he didn't care; even these forbidden texts often only half-answered his questions.

"In Tevinter, you would be a respected scholar for your work, invited to collaborate with magisters, lauded for your research," remarked Fenris one day as he studied one of Anders' experiments whilst the apostate carefully wrote up his notes and observations.

"Would I be expected to keep slaves and use blood magic?" asked Anders, glancing up briefly to squint at the contents of one of the flasks with his unnerving lyrium eye for a moment before jotting down a further observation.

"Of course," replied Fenris calmly. "It would be expected."

"Not interested," said Anders firmly. His tone of voice indicated the subject was closed.

Fenris found this curious about Anders; once, it would have occasioned an argument over whether all magisters used blood magic, weren't there at least some who didn't, what happened to those who didn't? and so forth - the same argument they had had repeatedly, over and over again in the past, many times. Now, Anders asked, Fenris replied, Anders nodded understanding and didn't seek to provoke an argument about it, taking Fenris' words at face value.

Anders made some comment about dinner and Fenris accepted the change of subject, letting the matter lie; but he puzzled over the change often over the next few days. Something had changed somewhere along the way. The relationship between himself and the mage had subtly changed and shifted once more. Since his initial injury they had gone from antagonistic companions, to friends, to - what? Lovers? Neither had put a name to this thing between them though Anders called him love, the endearment coming so naturally to the mage's lips. It was not until he had become so very ill in the Deep Roads that amatus had come so naturally to Fenris' own.

It was a little over four weeks since they had returned from the Deep Roads. Too much had changed between them for either man to drop back into old habits in quite the same way. Anders, at least, was not quite the same man he had been when they descended in search of Bartrand's abandoned thaig; and the change was more than a silver eye. Things had changed, too, between the man and the elf. This habit of Anders' acceptance of Fenris' words at face value was but an outward sign of this change, though Fenris could not fathom its precise nature.

The answer came to him late one night perhaps a week later as Anders lay curled up next to him asleep. Anders didn't push, because he respected Fenris' answer. Respected him.

It made the elf feel disquietened; he had taken to asking Anders more of his time in the Circle, pushing for answers when Anders danced around the subject. Anders had mentioned some of the injustices in the Circle, some of the punishments meted out to the mages, on more than one occasion - but always as something that happened to mages in general, never something that had happened specifically to him. When pressed, Anders had always said he was "lucky".

That answer had never felt entirely sincere to Fenris - and the closer he drew to Anders, the less he was content to let it lie. The more he thought on it, the angrier he felt over it - the uneasy feeling that Anders himself had actually suffered these indignities, these punishments, but denied it.

He'd seen scars on Anders' back - old, faded, silvery with age. He'd been whipped once; of that Fenris was certain; if there was one thing the former slave were familiar with, it was the scars left by a whipping. They'd been healed - by magic, no doubt - but by someone either unskilled in the art, or perhaps by someone low on mana. Someone weak from lack of food and ill-treatment - suffering the after-effects of a dose of magebane, perhaps? Anders never spoke of them. Fenris had never quite dared ask, even though he'd pushed and pushed on so much else.

And the dreams - the nightmares Anders suffered. Some of the things he'd said whilst blind... more and more, when Anders claimed he had been "lucky", Fenris had begun to wonder how much Anders was downplaying it or outright denying what had obviously happened to him. Yet still Anders deflected as Fenris poked and prodded and would not let the subject drop until he drove Anders to snap at him, wounded and angry and hurt that Fenris kept harrying him on a subject that was obviously painful to discuss.

Anders respected Fenris enough not to press on matters in the Imperium and his former life as a slave. Fenris wondered what was wrong with him that he could not show Anders that same respect in turn - and yet, the thought that Anders had been whipped, beaten, starved, imprisoned... maybe even raped, as he had hinted had happened to others... he could not abide that thought now. It made him burn with anger at the injustice of it - that this gentle, patient man who set aside his own work to heal others, to give of himself over and over, giving his food to starving patients, giving up even sleep to nurse them far into the early hours, who gave his all for others and never for himself - that he should have suffered just as badly as the most mistreated slave in the Imperium had, and all for the sake of something he had no control over, for -

Fenris sat up in the darkness. For the sin of magic.

He was stunned as he sat there in the darkness, the bedroom in his decrepit mansion lit only by the glowing embers of the fire and the single candle near the bed that Anders always begged him not to extinguish.

Because once he was locked in a dark place where there was no light.

Fenris stared down at the sleeping mage. Anders was curled upon his left side, his scars hidden by the curve of the pillow. His eyelashes made a dark semi-circle upon his pale cheek, tousled dark gold hair scattered upon the pillow and tumbling across his face. His arms were folded up against his chest as though he were hunching in upon himself even in the peace of sleep. He had worked late that evening after they'd returned here from his clinic, writing in a journal until Fenris had tugged the quill from his fingers amidst Anders' protests and thrust a bowl of stew into his hands instead.

Anders had laughed ruefully and eaten; they had made love afterwards, before Anders finally fell asleep, sated and calm and at peace. Fenris had lain awake after, his arms folded behind his head as he stared at a hole in the ceiling and pondered until his sudden realisation had had him starting upright.

Anders had told him so often how alike they were. He had denied it, over and over; and yet the truth had been staring him in the face all along. He had thought their similarities superficial - both of them stubborn (Maker, how stubborn!), and they'd joked about both learning lessons the hard way. But Anders had been right. Fenris had to admit that the way mages were treated was no better than slavery, in so many ways. They were denied freedom, abused.

He had asked Anders once what happened to the children of mages. It was late one evening after the mage had had a long day the clinic.

"You say that in the Circle, mages carried on... liaisons... with other mages? Illicit relationships? You said Karl was your first."

"Of course. We're living, feeling beings, Fenris. We have the same need for companionship, love - and yes, sex - that anyone else has. That doesn't go away just because someone locks you up in a tower and throws away the key for the rest of your life." Anders had given him a look of faint exasperation, tinged with a flash of regret and pain in his amber eye before he glanced down at his meal.

Fenris thought of what Anders had said about rape being one of the weapons in the arsenals of the templars against their mage charges. "Surely sometimes there must be... pregnancies?"

Anders' head jerked up and he had given Fenris a look the elf couldn't quite read, his eyes a little wide, his face otherwise curiously blank.

"What of the children? What happens to them?" pressed Fenris.

Anders had set down his fork, white-lipped, and risen from the table without a word. He had undressed and climbed into bed with his back to Fenris. It had been several nights later, after many drinks, when Anders had finally told him how the children of mages were taken away from their mothers immediately after birth and never seen again. Anders hadn't known what happened to them. Anders was very drunk and had cried himself to sleep in Fenris' arms afterwards.

Thinking back on that conversation now, Fenris wondered how he could have been so blind to it before. And yet, never once had Anders referred to anything that affected him directly. It was always, "They do these things to us," or "This was done to them." Never "This was done to me" or "I suffered this." The only time Anders ever spoke of what happened to him was when he referred to his escape attempts - very rarely about what happened when he was brought back.

Fenris stared down at Anders, sleeping peacefully, and thought about silvery scars criss-crossing pale skin; scars never spoken of, even though Anders knew Fenris had seen them and not spoken of them. He stared at the peaceful expression of the mage - guileless, vulnerable and trusting, looking strangely youthful without all the lines of care stamped into his face by duty and worry (how old is he anyway? how old when they locked him away? how old when he ran away the first time? how old, the last?) - and wondered what other scars Anders carried on the inside, where no-one could see.

Fenris finally lay back down again, holding his breath when Anders shifted in his sleep. But the mage only snuggled in against the elf's side, flinging an arm around Fenris' waist before settling again, his breathing deep and even once more.

Fenris stared at the stars through the hole in the ceiling and wondered if there was there a child out there in some Circle with Anders' amber eyes and laugh, his dark gold hair. The thought followed him down into dreams.