*WARNING* This chapter includes some dark references, such as murder/implied sexual assault/triggering scenarios. Please be advised before reading *WARNING*

Amelia sat on the steps and watched the hustle and bustle of Haven around her. She'd spent so many years watching the people around her to try and guess their every move. It'd paid to stay ahead of jobs and other assassins. Maker knew she'd made enough enemies in her short life.

She cocked her head to the left as she watched a mother come around the corner with a toddler's hand clasped in hers. The woman was beautiful - sun kissed skin, emerald eyes, and the curly black mass of hair elegantly twisted into a knot at the top of her head. A few tendrils strayed from the bun and twisted themselves in the crisp, cool air. The toddler, no older than three or four, toddled behind her with a toothy grin that showcased his dimples. His excited squeals as they meandered throughout the shops drifted to her from across the way.

Amelia's heart clenched. Sadness threatened to worm its way into her heart as she watched the happy family go about their daily lives. She'd never had that - they'd never had that. The redhead couldn't imagine a single time that her mother had walked her through a crowded market or even held her damn hand. And now, she'd never get the opportunity to do so again. The possibility of making things right between the two Trevelyan women had gone up in flames the minute her mother's body had been incinerated at the Conclave.

She fished an apple out of her pack. This one was the perfect combination of red and yellow hues, glistening in the sun. She'd just started to bring the fruit to her lips when she felt someone come to stand behind her.

"Come, little dove. Sit with me awhile," Amelia said over her shoulder.

Anna's irritated huff caused her elder sister to smile. Amelia had memorized her sister's walk from a very young age, which irritated the younger Trevelyan to no end. She'd always desperately wanted to spook her sister. Amelia would never tell her sister, but sometimes she gave in and forced a quick jump just to make her sister give that excited smile.

"How do you always know it's me?" Anna asked as she plopped down next to her on the stairs. "Honestly. I could have been Varric or Sera or-"

"Anna I've been around you damn near every day of your life," Amelia interrupted with a laugh. "I could pinpoint your walk in a crowd of hundreds."

"That's unfair, you know. You're always sneaking up on me."

Amelia threw an arm around her sister's shoulders and hugged the smaller woman close. No matter how many times she wrapped her sister in her arms, it always felt like home. Like no matter what happened, as long as they were together, they could conquer the world. But it also brought back the memories of not being able to hold her sister, unable to comfort her as her world had fallen apart.

Six Years Earlier

The sky opened up, and poured down upon her. Fitting, she thought as she stared up at the Circle Tower. Anna had been gone three years and four days. Three very long, harrowing years. Every letter that had been smuggled out of the stone prison and made its way to the elder sister churned deep within her gut. Three blighted years of abuse at the hands of people who were supposed to protect her - show her how to harness her powers.

The rain bit into her skin, even through the thick layers of her clothing. Quietly, the redhead made her way down the front pathway. She stuck to the shadows, thankful that she had decided to dress in every piece of black clothing she could find. Her boots barely made a sound as she danced around puddle after puddle.

The closer she got to the tower, the faster her heart beat. She had no doubt that her pulse could be seen frantically beating at the base of her throat. Excitement and anger shot through her veins as she slid up against the side of the staircase.

Two templars leaned against the weathered stone, talking about a few of the girls they'd taken a fancy to. Amelia suppressed a gag as she listened to them compare notes. She waited with baited breath for them to say Anna's name, but it never came. At least, not in that regard.

A scream, loud and primal, rang throughout the night, and she saw red. She'd only ever heard her sister scream like that once before, when she'd broken her arm falling off of one of the colts her dad had been trying to train for a great aunt. Someone was hurting her sister - now.

She gripped her daggers in her palms and waited. The templars were supposed to protect the mages, right? Surely not every templar here was corrupt and turning a blind eye to the pain of their charges. Right? Seconds ticked by, and the men didn't even acknowledge the scream, except to utter a few curses.

"You'd think by now she'd take it like a good bitch," one of the templars said to the other with a heavy sigh. "It's every damned night. I'm surprised she still has a voice to scream with."

"She still thinks her family's gonna come get her. Cousin or something. Girl's delusional."

Amelia gnashed her teeth together. They did this to Anna every night? Her sister had been screaming out, holding out hope of a rescue, for three whole years? Her stomach churned with anger as she quietly scaled the wall.

She quietly dropped to her feet behind the first guard. They were still joking together, the pigs. Amelia waited for the right moment and when they finally glanced off into the darkness, she struck. She wrapped her body around the back of his body and slid a dagger from one ear to the other. The warm blood sprayed within seconds, drenching the scene before them. As he gurgled and tried to make sense of what was happening, she coiled and struck again, this time shoving a dagger underneath the other man's chin. The metal cut through the flesh and muscle like butter.

"Don't worry, boys," she growled as she shoved the door of the circle open. "She won't be bothering you anymore."

Blood dripped onto the floor as she swiftly made her way through the foyer. Another templar sat slumped over in a chair, a bottle dangling from two fingers. She rolled her eyes. Drunk. She crept down a hallway and strained to her her sister. As much as it pained her to hear the screams, they were the beacon she desperately needed.

A templar stumbled out of a room, backwards, pants around his ankles. He was laughing as he reached for his pants, almost loud enough to drown out the sobs she could hear coming from inside the dark room. She snuck behind him to peer into the room. A girl, 16, maybe 17, sat holding her tattered robes to the front of her body, blood trailing down her thighs.

Amelia slammed the templar against the wall. "Make so much as one sound, and I'll cut your manhood clean off and feed it to you. Do you understand?"

The templar jerked his head in a quick nod just as the stench of piss overwhelmed them. She frowned and looked down. She shook her head as her suspicions were confirmed. The idiot had just pissed himself. She held a knife to the side of his throat as she tried, albeit in vain, to keep her boots out of the piss collecting beneath his boots.

"Are you okay?" Amelia asked the girl.

The girl sat, frozen, on the middle of the floor. Amelia nearly cursed. She didn't have time for this. Her objective was to break in, take her sister, and leave. She'd already taken more lives that she had wanted to, not that they'd given her much choice.

"Give me a second, yeah?" she asked the girl, who merely nodded in response. "Great."

Without another word, she spun the boy around. He'd paled, the laughter having left his soul moments ago. His wide eyes met hers, and she gave him a smile. And the poor sod relaxed, just like she'd expected.

"You're disgusting," she sneered as she stabbed the knife deep into his gullet.

He howled in pain as she ripped the knife across his midsection. Desperately, he held his hands to his stomach in an attempt to hold his organs in place. Amelia grinned at him as his intestines pushed past the gaps in his fingers, blood mixing in with the urine on the floor.

"You," she said as she once again looked at the girl on the floor. "Can you walk?"

The girl nodded, her hollow expression damn near looking through the rogue.

"Good. Take this," she tossed her cloak at the girl, "and run. At the boat dock, there's two elves. Females. Tell them Amelia sent you."

The girl's gaze snapped back to Amelia, her eyes wide. "Amelia?" As in-"

"The less you know, girl, the better. Now go."

The girl nodded as she wrapped the cloak around her lithe frame. Amelia moved a few feet away to give the frightened child enough room to maneuver. The teenager gripped the edges of the cloak so tightly that her knuckles went white. Amelia almost growled. If he wasn't dead already, she definitely would have killed him then.

Usually, she'd wait until she knew the girl had fled safely. Unfortunately, tonight she didn't have the luxury of waiting. Amelia turned her back on the girl and made her way up the stairs. The screaming had returned. Each scream was absolute hell on her nerves as she crept closer and closer.

At the next landing, she met more wide eyed mages. Amelia gave them a nod before skirting around them, hoping that they didn't blow whatever cover she still had left. With some luck, she'd get to the next staircase with no issue.

Wishful thinking on her part, however, as when she reached the next staircase, there were three more templars waiting for her. This time, they spotted her before she could retreat to the safety of the shadows. They'd taken one look at her covered in blood, weapons gripped in her fists, and charged.

As she reached the top floor, the screaming stopped. Amelia cursed under her breath. The screams had brought her all the way to the top, but there were 7 doors lining the hallway. If she opened the wrong door and managed to find it full of templars, or angry mages, she could fail immediately.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath.

Did she call out Anna's name, and hope for the best? Did she just start opening doors and hoping that there weren't anymore armed guards? She impatiently tapped her blade against her thigh as she weighed her options. She almost regretted helping the girl, knowing that those seconds she'd spent playing with the man's innards could have really come in handy right now.

She slowed her breathing and closed her eyes. The silence that normally would have claimed the keep was drowned out by the screams on the levels below them. Amelia sighed as she took a few more steps down the corridor. She'd reached out and clasped a door knob in hand when she heard muffled words from the door to her left.

The seconds it took to open that door felt like hours. The door was thrown open with such force, it almost bounced off of the wall. Her breath caught in her throat. Anna knelt in the middle of the room, her robes drenched in sweat and blood, dark hair clinging to her face. Her body had always been on the skinny side, but what Amelia now saw made bile rise in her throat. Anna was too thin, the skin stretched taught over the bones. Her long hair was matted and filthy. But the green eyes, the same color as her own, guarded and full of anguish is what broke the rogue.

"Anna!" she breathed.

She tried to run into the room. The only thing she wanted more than whisking her sister from this hellhole was to hold Anna in her arms, to make it real. Three years and four days and Anna was within arm's reach.

She was stopped, however, by a sword to the throat. The rogue growled as her gaze followed the steel past the hilt, the calloused hand that gripped it, to the man who stood in her way. His face was set in grim determination. He used his body as a human shield, protecting the younger Treveylan.

"If you value your life, Templar," she spat, venom lacing her voice, " then I suggest you move out of my way."

"I won't let you kill her like you've killed everyone else!" he snapped back, and she saw his fingers tighten on the hilt.

"Cullen, please," the voice behind them pleaded.

Anna's already bruised heart cracked a little further. Anna's voice was weak and devoid of any emotion. She watched as the templar hesitated and glanced back at her sister. The second he was stupid enough to look away from her, she dove. The floor bit into the flesh of her back as she rolled across the pools of blood. She came to a stop in front of her younger sister.

"Anna," Amelia whispered as she touched her fingertips to her sister's jaw. "Andraste's ass, Anna. It's you!"

"You came," Anna replied, bewildered. "You actually came!"

Amelia couldn't wait any longer. She embraced her sister in a damn near bone crushing hug, and she cried. Three years, four days too late, she held her sister while the smaller Treveylan's body shook with her sobs.

"I'll always come back, Anna," she whispered fervently.

"This is great and all but can someone please tell me what on earth is going on?" the man, Cullen, snapped from behind them.

"I'm her sister, and I've come to take her home," Amelia snapped. She released her sister and rose to her feet, daggers clenched in hand. "And if you think you can stop me-"

"There's a passageway in the south wing," he said, almost tripping over his words in his excitement. "It'll lead you to the woods. About ten-"

"Ten meters to the left, there's an abandoned boat dock," she finished with a sly grin.

"If you hurry, you can probably make it before anybody sees. I'll buy you as much time as you can."

Amelia nodded, unsure as to why she felt she could trust him. She picked her sister off the floor as gently as she could. The two women gave Cullen a nod before they set off for the door he had indicated earlier. She'd just eased Anna through the doorway when Cullen's voice stopped her once more.

"Amelia? Take care of her?"

"You have my word. And Cullen? Don't get killed."

Present Day:

Anna nodded towards the same mother and child that Amelia had been watching earlier. "She looks like a good mama, doesn't she? Her eyes don't leave him when he toddles away and she keeps holding his hand. Do you remember a single time that Mama held our hands?"

Amelia frowned. "No, I can't say that I do."

"I can't either," Anna replied, and it hurt the elder Treveylan's heart. "But I can remember all the times that you held my hand. That means something, right?"

Amelia bumped her shoulder into her sister's. "Yeah. That means something."