Notes: This is just the title of a traditional song. I was partially inspired by Nightwish's version of it, though.
There is a scene that is taken almost directly from the game, because it's the first meeting with Varric and is perfect.
Chapter 11: Over the Hills and Far Away
If Caitlyn had had any more capacity for fury, her uncle Gamlen would be dead now, a charred corpse on the floor of his Lowtown hovel. However, she was, at this point, too tired and emotionally overwhelmed to be able to muster much more rage.
Her mother had been deeply disappointed. It was not just that Gamlen had lost the Amell mansion through gambling. As bad as that was, it was just a house, and Caitlyn and Carver both thought she would have been able to forgive him that eventually, since what remained of the family was now together again. However, he had also indentured Caitlyn and Carver to a smuggler, forcing them to work off a bribe and engage in dangerous, low, criminal work for a full year. That was what Leandra could not forgive—and for that matter, neither could either of her children.
What kind of a life am I going to have? Caitlyn thought wretchedly as she began her first day on the job with the elven woman Athenril. Three years ago, I thought I would live next door to my parents with Anders and our family, a quiet but happy and respectable life. Now it seems that I'm going to be a Kirkwall bottom-feeder with a fatherless child and no prospects for anything better.
Instantly she rebuked herself for that. No, she thought. It is bad, but it could be much worse. At least I am working for a woman who has given me permission to defend myself if... threatened. She reflected on the fact that already, a couple of ill-bred Kirkwall men had made vulgar comments about the fact that she was a single mother and what they wrongly believed that implied about her "availability." Athenril had overheard and had told her immediately that, while she didn't want Caitlyn burning people to a crisp just for nasty talk, she did not have to tolerate being physically menaced, even by business associates. And this is only for one year. After that, Carver and I can find some way of getting back the Amell manor. That was something they had decided swiftly; once the extent of Gamlen's selfishness had become clear, they agreed that they would not be able to live with him for the rest of their lives. Recovering the family estate was a noble goal. It was something to live for. And I will do it not just for Mother, but for Mal, she thought, kissing her child goodbye for the day as he dozed. If I have anything to say about it, he will grow up protected and never want for anything... except, I suppose, a father.
She wondered if part of the reason she was too tired to be angry at Gamlen was that she had devoted so much mental energy to being angry at Anders and Leliana. He got my father killed, and she made a bard's promise that I stupidly believed, which probably got my sister killed, she thought frequently as she brooded on her grudges.
In more rational moments, she knew she was being unfair. Neither of her lovers had been deceitful or false. They had both been sweet and honest, and she knew it when she was able to think about it fairly. Anders had meant to come back, and Leliana would never have told her a lie knowing that it would have resulted in the entire family being put in mortal peril. But when her mother and Carver gave her those looks—looks of disappointment faintly tinged with resentment—she knew that they still blamed her for Bethany's death, at least, and it was too much for her to shoulder all the blame for that alone. She had loved her little sister dearly. Ever since Father had died, they had become very close, as the two remaining mages—if Mal was one, he was far too young to manifest magic yet—and as sisters who shared a bedroom. Bethany's support during Caitlyn's pregnancy had also meant a lot to her... and now she was gone, and Caitlyn could not help but think that Mother and Carver were right that she was partly responsible. It was unbearable, and she had to find a way of handling it. Even if she could not argue with them, because they never vocally brought the subject up, for her own sanity she had to push some of the fault onto others—and if those others aren't actually here, what harm does it do? she reassured herself. No one gets hurt if they don't hear me saying it, and it helps me to cope.
It hurt not to have Bethany's ashes. Caitlyn had not expected that it would hurt so much, but it did. They had Father's, and even though she knew that it was just the ashes of his body and that he was not actually there, the fact that they were with the Hawkes, the small urn resting on Gamlen's hearth, made them feel a little closer to him. The urn was a focus for her memories about her father, and a reassurance that they had laid his body to rest and said a final, respectful, loving goodbye—but they had no such focus for Bethany. Caitlyn also knew that it didn't really matter what became of an empty body, but it still felt wrong to have just left it behind for the darkspawn and Blighted animals. She tried not to think about what must have happened to it after they had left.
She also regretted leaving behind the ring and hairpin. Rather than helping her to move on, being without these items had flooded her with guilt, because she knew that she had indeed left them behind out of spite. She'd convinced herself that she had not, but she knew now that she had. But, as was often the case with an act of spite, she had hurt herself instead.
Mal was, of course, a living reminder of Anders, and with every day that passed by, Caitlyn found herself seeing more of a physical resemblance between them. His hair was strawberry blond, a mix of both of theirs, and his eyes were hazel, also a mix... but they were clearly shaped like Anders', as was his mouth. He had her nose, but he was more his father's son with every passing day. But as he grew over the course of that year, stopped requiring nappies, and his speech ironed out to perfect diction, she found that she was thinking of him as a person in his own right, not a memory of his father.
Well... she would have to move on, she thought. She wished she still had the two objects that were just reminders of Anders, but like her poor sister's body, they were gone, gone—like Lothering, like their old lives, like their old dreams.
Dragon 9:31.
Caitlyn was relieved that, at last, the indenture to Athenril was over. It had been a nightmarish year of degrading work. Athenril's customers and business associates were mostly unsavory, whether Lowtown dock rats or entitled Hightown swine, and Caitlyn had had to endure frequent catcalls and come-ons. Some of them also had nasty comments to make about the fact that she was Fereldan, insinuating that "dog women" should be pleased to have "attentions" from anyone. It was infuriating. Even if she had not sworn off all such things, Caitlyn certainly would not have been interested in the kinds of boorish brontos who were Athenril's business partners. But, she supposed, attracting her wasn't the point of the behavior; it was to humiliate her.
At least Athenril, as a fellow woman who had dealt with this all her life—and worse, as an elf—had given her permission to use magic if any customers or business associates actually threatened her. Towards the last, when a stupid beady-eyed slug of a "man" with a bad dye job, a younger ale-swilling Hightown toff, and two sycophantic henchmen tried to take it farther than catcalling, she had finally done just that. They had not been prepared for a woman who could defend herself, let alone a powerful mage. A Walking Bomb had taken care of the whole lot of them. She had not actually reported that to Athenril, but had made it look like the work of a gang. There were plenty of those in town.
Some of her anger had subsided into depression and sadness. She was certainly no longer angry at Leliana. She wished the former bard had come with her family, because she would always wonder if another defender would have made the difference for Bethany, but after she learned more about what had happened in the Blight, she had understood why Leliana had felt that her duty was to help the Wardens defend Ferelden. There were whispers that there had been a problem of some sort at the Circle of Magi, though no one seemed to have any details. Leliana probably had tried to contact her after they had left Lothering, but it was too late by then.
Leliana was with Warden Cousland, now the Hero of Ferelden—but Caitlyn found that she did not begrudge her former lover that happiness. Caitlyn recalled the brief time that she had seen Elissa Cousland. It was true, she thought, that Cousland was an appealing figure. Caitlyn herself had found her attractive. There was an air of romanticism and even glamour to the dual-wielding rogue, between the confidence and artistry she displayed while handling her daggers, her resolute but slightly playful smile, and her mildly disheveled braid—like I used to have, Caitlyn thought, remembering when her hair had been long. She now wore it at her shoulders, but she wondered if she would ever grow it out to her waist again. She supposed she wasn't overly surprised that Leliana, the romantic bard, was with such a person as Cousland, and she wished them well. She's far more suited to Leliana than I was, a sad, moody apostate mage with a fatherless child and a cutting word on my tongue half the time.
She wanted to stay angry at Anders, but that was becoming harder too. She wanted to keep blaming him for the loss of Bethany, but she knew that it was unfair, and at some point over the year, she had been unable to keep it up. Others bore more blame for that: the darkspawn, the Archdemon for summoning them, Flemeth for sitting by and not rescuing them until Bethany had died, and, yes, herself for insisting that the family wait for a letter that never came. Anders might have been able to save her if he had been present, and so might her father, but the causality was too attenuated for her to be able to fault Anders for Bethany's loss. It was more accurate to say that his appearance in Lothering four years ago, his relationship with her, had set in motion a bad chain of events, but there were too many links for her to justly say that everything bad that had happened was his fault. Most bad things, minus the Blight, had seemed to have started with him, though.
With her disappointment in her uncle, her poor circumstances, and with so many Kirkwallers spouting venom about Fereldans and expressing open contempt for mages—not knowing that she was one—she found herself missing the idyllic life she had lived in Lothering before everything had gone so wrong. Although she pinned Anders' appearance as the beginning of the end, her relationship itself was still a sweet memory—and whenever she looked at Mal, she couldn't regret it. That too clouded her anger at him.
She still resented him for not keeping his promise, and although she could not blame him in any way for Bethany's death, to a certain extent, she could place a degree of blame on his shoulders for her father's. And yet... when they had been together, he seemed... well, almost perfect now in her memories. She knew, rationally, that it hadn't been so. He had been strident and sometimes too eager to pick a fight with Carver, but he had also been sweet and respectful of her. She was afraid to love again, or even let anybody touch her, but she was also aware that between Anders and Leliana, she had developed high standards for respectful behavior that no one she had encountered in Kirkwall had even come close to meeting. Ah well, she thought while reflecting on that, my first duty is to my family anyway. I have a child to raise, and I need to find some way of getting back the Amell manor for Mother so that we can get out of Uncle Gamlen's hovel. Those were her priorities now.
She wondered what had actually happened at the Fereldan Circle of Magi during the Blight. She had considered trying to contact the Warden-Commander for information about Anders, but she had had no status in Kirkwall, being indentured, and it would have had to go through Athenril. It had seemed very unlikely that a letter from a small-scale Kirkwall smuggler would make it to the Hero of Ferelden's desk. That dark uncertainty had helped to do away with some of her anger at him. If he had suffered, or—Maker forbid—died in some kind of disaster, she couldn't be angry at him. She supposed that she now had authority to write on her own behalf, and perhaps she would do so... once she worked up the courage. A part of her almost didn't want to know, for fear that the answer would be that he had made it and wished to stay where he was. That would ruin and defile her happy memories. Maybe it was best for him to live on as just a memory now.
Caitlyn had just trudged unhappily away from the dwarf Bartrand Tethras after a humiliating rejection of what she was sure was her best chance to earn enough gold to recover the Amell mansion, when she felt a body slam against her side and heard the sudden pounding of boots on pavement. She reached inside her pocket and realized, with horror, that she was missing her coin purse.
"You!" she roared at the escaping thief—but it was too late. He had far too much of a lead on her. All I need right now is to lose what little coin I have, she thought wretchedly as she started to take off after him in spite of that. She had to at least try. Maybe she could catch him without using a spell. It was exceedingly risky to use magic in broad daylight... Meredith Stannard, the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall and the most mage-hating Templar she had ever heard of, had just passed by with a glower, as if she suspected that Caitlyn was a mage and only lacked proof of it...
A sudden snap, a thud, and a cry of pain pierced the air. As she and Carver rounded a corner, she saw the thief, pinned to a wall by a... not an arrow, she thought, but a crossbow bolt. Or is that a crossbow? Caitlyn examined the bizarre weapon that the dwarf who had shot the pickpocket was carrying. It was too big and boxy to be a crossbow. Some ingenious mechanical dwarven invention, then. She had heard of dwarven machinery and engineering before, and the stories had impressed her.
And—whoa whoa! She tried not to notice, but this was the handsomest dwarf she had ever seen. He had only a stubble beard, none of the vast clouds of unnecessary facial hair that most male dwarves sported, and his entire air was that of a person who had seen it all and then some. The swagger with which he carried himself reminded her a bit of Anders when he was in an upbeat mood.
"I knew a guy once who could take every coin out of your pockets just by smiling at you," he growled, approaching the thief menacingly. "But you? You don't have the style to work Hightown, let alone the Merchants' Guild."
The thief wordlessly returned Caitlyn's coin purse to the dwarf. Momentarily she wondered if he would give it back to her now...
"Might want to find yourself a new line of work," the dwarf hissed, landing a punch directly to the thief's face and ripping the arrow viciously from his shoulder.
He turned around and approached her and Carver. Before he reached them, he tossed the bag of coins back to her, which she caught nimbly. A good deed? From someone in Kirkwall? I wonder what the price will be, she thought cynically.
"How do you do?" the dwarf greeted them, menace and malice entirely absent from his voice now. It was almost as if he were a different person. "Varric Tethras at your service."
Tethras! Then he is related to Bartrand, she thought immediately.
"I apologize for Bartrand," he continued. Ah ha! she thought. "He wouldn't know an opportunity if it hit him square in the jaw."
I will consider you an expert in that particular subject, she thought, recalling the sucker punch that he had inflicted on the thief. Suddenly, this day was looking much better.
Varric, it turned out, had not recovered her purse out of pure altruism, but his price was one that Caitlyn was more than willing to pay, because it was the very "price" that she had just then attempted to "pay" to Varric's brother Bartrand—to go along with him and his people in the Deep Roads expedition that he had planned. Varric had heard of her through some of his connections to the Kirkwall underground elements. Apparently, she was known among smugglers as a tough customer, one who did not tolerate backtalk and demeaning conduct from anybody—and even rarer was her specific skill set. A powerful mage, it seemed, would be useful indeed in the Deep Roads.
And if I can get enough money from this to buy back the Amell manor, perhaps Mal and I will be protected politically from the Templars, she thought. More than that—I can work against them as a noble. Even if he is not a mage—though he probably is, with two mage parents—they could still take him away as the child of a mage. They claim that right. And they would send him away from me. I wouldn't even get to raise him, to be his mother, in the Circle. I'd probably never see him again, nor would the rest of my family. It cannot happen. This family has been diminished and shattered enough by those bastards. I have to get into this expedition and get this coin.
It would not be quite that simple, of course. She needed to come up with enough coin to buy her way in, and Bartrand, according to Varric, didn't actually know what he was doing. He would be bumbling into the Deep Roads with no maps, which struck Caitlyn as a profoundly stupid thing to do even for a dwarf with "Stone sense." But as she had learned later that night after visiting Varric in the Hanged Man, a pub in Lowtown, there was a Fereldan Grey Warden recently arrived in Kirkwall who had maps of the Deep Roads. That was all that he knew, but the Fereldan shopkeeper Lirene would be able to tell her how to find this Grey Warden.
I wonder who it is, she thought. Obviously, not Warden Cousland herself, nor would it have been Warden Loghain. He, too, was far too well-known across Thedas for Kirkwallers to be speaking of him just as "a Fereldan Grey Warden." It must have been someone recruited after the end of the Blight. She just hoped that it would be someone who was easy to deal with.
She and Carver went to the shop the following day, hoping that Varric's information was accurate. It was: Lirene was deeply proud and pleased to help a fellow Fereldan customer. "I haven't met him myself," she said. "Don't even know his name, just that he is a mage. His ship just came ashore from Amaranthine a couple of days ago, but word has it that he was sent here by the Hero of the Blight to help the refugees—to help us! Those Fereldan-bashing port authorities must've hated it, especially a mage, but they couldn't gainsay a sealed order from the Grey Wardens signed by Lady Cousland herself. Maker bless the Hero and Maker bless our Warden."
"Yes," Caitlyn said patiently, "indeed so. Everything I have heard about Warden Cousland shows that she is a kind, honorable woman, so of course she would want to help people from her country who were stuck here due to the Blight."
"Have you ever seen the Hero in person?" Lirene inquired conversationally. "I haven't spoken to anyone who has, but you never know."
Caitlyn was losing her patience; she needed to know how to find this Grey Warden who had just arrived, but she would humor the woman's hero worship for now, since, after all, she could say something truthful that would impress Lirene at the same time. "I have, in fact," she said. When Lirene's face lit up, she continued, "I have also seen Ferelden's new King before he was crowned. My family and I lived in Lothering, and the Wardens passed through just before we left. She had her famous blades on her back and was going through the town helping people. It's what she does."
"Well!" Lirene said, smiling. "Not many here in Kirkwall can say that they've seen her."
"I suppose not," she said briefly. "Now... about 'our' Warden, the one who has Deep Roads maps. You said he's a mage? Where can I find this Warden, exactly?" She hoped that he wasn't holed up in the Viscount's Keep. As a guard, Aveline might be able to get her in, but it would be another hassle and probably another round of disrespect for being a Fereldan woman. Lady Cousland might be an altruistic person, but she had been born a high noble, and she might have sent her Warden to the Keep without really thinking about it.
"He went where the need is greatest," Lirene said. "He has a place set up in Darktown. Here, let me show you where to find it."
As soon as Caitlyn and Carver had the marked map, they thanked Lirene—making sure to buy a couple of goods from her as a gesture of goodwill—and headed home.
"Mamma!" exulted Mal as Caitlyn swung the door to her uncle's house open. She set her staff in the corner and swept him up in her arms as Carver walked past her.
"You're getting big," she remarked, setting him down quickly.
He grinned back. "Did you and Uncle Carver have a good day?" he asked politely.
Three years old, she thought, smiling proudly at his perfect speech. "We did, actually," she said. "Where is your grandmother? We need to tell her about what happened today."
Leandra emerged from one of the back rooms. Her hair was now entirely silver despite the fact that she was only in her forties, a consequence of trauma, sorrow, and stress. "Welcome home," she said. She turned from Caitlyn to Carver. "That dwarf you met came by today."
"Varric Tethras?" she asked. "What did he want? I hope he didn't try to intimidate you," she added. "I thought he was trustworthy. If I was mistaken—"
"He only asked about you and Carver," she assured her daughter. "I told him that you had gone to the Fereldan shop." She smiled at her grandson. "He liked Mal."
Mal beamed. "He did! And he looks like me a little," he added.
Caitlyn considered that. She had not thought there was a physical resemblance between Varric and Anders, but she supposed that in some ways, it was true, once she looked past the fact that one was human and one was a dwarf. Stubble beards, reddish-blond hair, light brown eyes. She smiled at her son sadly. "I guess he does! But you really resemble your father, Mal." She sighed.
Mal's smile melted away. As soon as he was old enough to understand, she had told him a little about Anders—his name, the fact that Mal was named for him as well as his grandfather Hawke, the fact that Anders had been a mage and a Healer and that they had met in a blizzard. That was all she could stand. Beyond the bare facts, anger and sadness still warred with each other too much for her to be comfortable giving her son a narrative of how and why his father had left and never come back. He was still too young anyway, she had reassured herself. Once he was old enough to understand about the Circle and phylacteries and the many horrible things that could happen to a mage in Templar custody, then she would surely have moved on and come to peace with it. But he did know that his father was gone, and that fact alone made him sad. "Gone," to three-year-old Mal, meant what had happened to Aunt Bethany.
"Caitlyn and I went to Lirene's," Carver spoke up, noticing his sister's sudden unhappiness. "I think Cait got close to setting the woman aflame—"
"That's not true," she protested mildly. "I was just losing patience with her praise of Lady Cousland and awe at the fact that we had seen her. We had business."
"And we got what we wanted," Carver said. "Mother—we have a plan. Lady Cousland sent a Grey Warden to Kirkwall to help the Blight refugees, and this fellow has maps of the Deep Roads."
"The Deep Roads?" Leandra exclaimed in dismay. "But you can't mean you truly intend—"
"Mother, we cannot stay here," Caitlyn said in hard tones. "This is Uncle Gamlen's house, for one, and he doesn't really have room for all of us. That's going to be even more the case once Mal grows a bit more. And unless we get the political protection that will come of being 'Hawkes of Hightown,' the ability to live off investments rather than taking jobs from the shady elements of the city, it's just a matter of time before Meredith Stannard sends some Templars to take me away." She glanced at Mal, who was staring up at her with shocked eyes and looking very much indeed like his father right now—at least, as Caitlyn remembered him. She wondered, with a pang, how much Mal already understood about mages and Templars. The thought was upsetting to her; it seemed like a loss of innocence. No, she promised herself. I will not let you be orphaned. Even though you do have family here, I will not let you lose both of your parents.
Leandra wailed, "But that doesn't mean you need to scrape about in the Deep Roads! It's dangerous."
"Mother, anything that provides a lot of coin is dangerous. This is the best chance we have. And after dinner, I think Carver and I might go into Darktown to have a talk with this Grey Warden."
"Just be careful," Leandra pleaded, resigned. "That's a bad, bad place."
"It's where we would be if not for our uncle," Carver said sharply. Caitlyn glanced at her brother in surprise; he rarely talked that way to their mother, but then... he was increasingly losing his patience with her tendency to baby them, especially since the livelihood of their family—possibly even the very integrity of what remained of it—depended on their taking on dangers to help the family. And Carver, for all his attitude, had become extremely pro-Ferelden since coming to Kirkwall and did not take well to anything that could be seen as a slight of Fereldan refugees. After a year of hearing bigoted, spiteful comments from Kirkwallers about her country of origin, Caitlyn agreed.
Varric Tethras arrived at Gamlen's house just in time to join Caitlyn and Carver as they set off in the twilight for the nearest entrance to Darktown. He grinned at little Mal, who waved goodbye and then plopped down on the floor in front of the mabari Baldwin to play fetch. Caitlyn was not concerned. Her dog had grown up with her son, and as a mabari, he was extremely intelligent and understood to be very gentle with the small human who was his mistress's own pup. In fact, she thought darkly, Baldwin is the best guardian in the house for Mal right now. Mother means well but can barely wield a blade, and Uncle Gamlen... She sighed. He was in his cups again after dinner, shut up in his bedroom at Leandra's insistence so that Mal would not be exposed to his drunkenness. This cannot continue, she thought. Nobody can stand it for much longer. We have to get out.
"You know what I like about the Undercity?" Varric remarked as the entered the filthy, dank abandoned mines. "Absolutely nothing."
In spite of herself, Caitlyn managed a dark laugh. "Surely it must provide opportunities for... business ventures?"
"The Merchants' Guild is fully aboveground, I assure you," he said. "Literally and otherwise."
"Why do I think that's not entirely true?" she said, smiling. "You heard of us, after all."
Varric chuckled. "You'll do well in Kirkwall, Hawke. Ah—I think we've found our place."
The trio stopped in front of a dusty hole-in-the-wall where a crowd of refugees, including some who looked rather tough and menacing, were standing. One of them crossed his arms and glowered.
"Is this where we can find the Grey Warden sent by the Hero of Ferelden?" Caitlyn asked.
"What do you lot want with him? Never seen any of you in Darktown, which means you're doing better than most of us. I'll have you know, he has a right to be here."
"That's exactly what I have heard," Caitlyn agreed, "and we're not here to interfere with him in any way."
"Yeah? You'd say that, wouldn't you?"
Carver strode forward. "You fought at Ostagar, didn't you?" he said. "So did I. We're all Fereldans here. Whatever this Warden is doing, if it helps the refugees, we support it. We just need to talk to him."
The big refugee considered Carver's words before nodding and uncrossing his arms. "All right. But if you cause any trouble, you'll answer to us."
"We're not here to cause trouble," Caitlyn assured them as the refugee acting as a guard moved aside to let them push open the doors. Varric, Carver, and Caitlyn walked into the room, where a mage was casting a blue glowing spell, his back turned and his head bent over a refugee who was laid out on a bed.
"Oh, shit."
Carver, who had been at the head of the group, tried to shove his sister back out the doors, a look of stark panic in his face as he uttered the swear, but it was too late. The mage Warden had risen upright and turned around to face them. His eyes popped in recognition.
Anders staggered backward, both hands clapped over his mouth, his eyes wide in shock and disbelief. He bumped against the rickety wall of his clinic, continuing to stare as his hands slowly fell away from his mouth. "Oh, Maker, it can't be," he breathed. He blinked, as if still not believing his own eyes.
Across the small space of the clinic, mere feet away, Caitlyn had no such doubt. He was a few years older, as they all were, and he wore his hair differently, but there was no question of who it was. He even wore a similar kind of coat, though this one was more raffish than the one he'd had in Lothering. And as her quick mind put the available facts together—Grey Warden, Hero of Ferelden's orders, free of the Circle, sent to Kirkwall—all the swirling emotions in her mind coalesced in a fraction of a second to one: rage. Utter, incoherent, blinding fury. Gone was her sad nostalgia for lost joy. He's a Warden. He's free of the Circle. He joined the Wardens instead of seeking me.
"You!" she roared. A searing fireball formed in her palm, and without thinking about the fact that the entire room was full of wood and straw—and sick people—she hurled it directly at his head.
Anders reacted instantly, casting an arcane shield that absorbed the fireball harmlessly. In the next moment, he grabbed his staff and blasted her with an invisible spell that nonetheless affected her profoundly. The second fireball she was readying vanished before it could fully form.
She realized what had happened at once and stared back at him, upset and shocked now in addition to being furious. "You dispelled my magic," she exclaimed, hardly believing it. "You—how dare you—Carver, get him—"
Carver was staring in shock at the proceedings, and beside him, Varric was looking on in confusion. "Are we assassinating the Warden?" he asked Carver in a low voice. "Seems stupid..."
Carver shook his head at the dwarf. "There's history. He's..."
"Oh... the kid." Varric whistled. "Yeah, I see the resemblance now. Didn't expect that."
Carver spoke to his sister. "Caitlyn, no."
She whirled around. "You side with him now? Now? Fine, then." Turning back to Anders, rage seeping from every line of her face, she snarled, "How dare you take away my magic! You had that coming, you two-faced absconding bastard!"
"Caitlyn," Carver muttered, "these walls are wood. You'll burn it down around us. And if you hurt him, those refugees outside the door are going to kill every one of us."
"Cait," Anders pleaded, "let me explain, please."
"Explain?" she screamed, the plea only serving to enrage her further. "Explain what happened to my father! Explain why you never came back to me after three years, knowing that we were going to have a child! Explain why, after you did get out, you joined the bloody Wardens instead of coming back to us! We had a Blight, and you knew it was coming! Maker, you were bloody attacked by Blighted creatures the first night we ever met! You abandoned us to that after promising me!" She felt tears come to her eyes. "My sister is dead now, I'll have you know—my sweet little sister, dead, because you weren't there to heal her and my father wasn't there to help!" To her dismay, humiliation, and additional fury, her voice broke at the last. She turned aside, ashamed for him to see her cry.
Anders had listened to the entire torrent of furious anguish with rapidly growing pain in his eyes and every line of his face, taking it without argument or further interruption. When at last she was spent, he finally spoke. "I can explain what happened—and I know about Bethany."
"Oh, do you?" she sneered, wiping her eyes and nose as she faced him again. "How do you know? And if you do, why in the Void didn't you show up until just now? I heard that you only arrived in Kirkwall a few days ago."
"I promise you—"
"You promise," she mocked. "Your promises are as worthless as that pile of rotten straw."
He glared back, provoked at last to a surge of anger himself. A brief crackle of bluish-white light flickered beneath his skin. "Are you going to let me talk?"
"I don't owe you a bloody damned thing," she snarled. "How dare you." She felt her mana level rise again and readied a new spell, this one frost.
He noticed at once and immediately dispelled it again. She sputtered in outrage and returned to yelling at him to dissipate some of the anger she felt. "Do you have any idea what I've been through because of you?" she shouted. "My father—my sister—and the things these people say about me because I'm a single Fereldan mother, Anders!"
"Then he... survived?" Anders' face lit up with hope. "He's here?"
"Yes, he's here, no thanks to you," she snapped.
Carver finally interceded. "Anders," he said, "believe it or not, we're actually here on business. This is Varric Tethras—"
"Sorry to intrude on the, er, family reunion," Varric said wryly.
"Is he..." Anders glanced quickly at Caitlyn, then back to Carver.
She understood at once what he was asking and deeply resented the unspoken question. "No, he's not, but if you think you can get back into my good graces just like this—"
"I just want the chance to say what really happened," Anders pleaded. "That's all. I know you've suffered. I was there when your father died... and I did return to Lothering once I escaped for the last time, but you were just gone. That's how I know what happened to your sister," he said grimly.
Something occurred to her then. "Wait... that means..."
He nodded. "I saw her... body."
"Why don't you come to our house... well, our uncle Gamlen's house... in Lowtown tonight?" Carver suggested, relieved that his sister was no longer screaming at him or trying to set him on fire. "Mother, Uncle, and... Mal... are there. You can tell all of us what happened."
"Mal?"
"Malcolm," Caitlyn said tightly. "That's what I named him." She glowered across the clinic at Anders. "Carver had to find Father's body and carry it back," she said pointedly. "At sixteen. He had to carry his own father's dead body back home."
"I'm sorry for everything you went through," Anders said, meaning it. His eyes were wide and his hands were open in supplication. "I never wanted you to suffer—any of you. Please, believe that, at least." I've suffered too, he thought—but he did not dare say it yet. That would have to wait.
The energy was suddenly let out of Caitlyn. This whole meeting was too much, entirely too much. A sob wracked her at his plea, and she shook where she stood. "We came because we heard that there was a Grey Warden here who had maps of the Deep Roads," she said, her voice sounding hollow now. "Varric's brother is leading an expedition and Carver and I are hopefully going to go along in exchange for a share of the treasure. We're living with our uncle in Lowtown because he gambled away the family estate, and we think that we can get enough coin from this to buy it back. We just need these maps so we'll be able to navigate."
You owe them this, Justice whispered in Anders' thoughts. "I did become a Warden, and I do have maps of the Deep Roads," he said slowly. "Of course I'll lend them to you."
I need to help Karl too, he thought, but... Suddenly, all thoughts of restarting his relationship with Karl had fled. When he had left Ferelden, after the disaster of the murder of Warden Rolan, he had at last been convinced that all the Hawkes were either dead or worse, and that if he could get Karl out of the Kirkwall Circle, he should attempt to start over with him if they could. But this changed everything. He would get Karl out of the Circle, but his first loyalty was to the woman standing before him now. The fact that she was alive, healthy, and not the horrific thing he had concocted in his imagination after seeing the Mother made him happy beyond description. When Carver had named the people living at Gamlen Amell's house, he had not mentioned anyone else whose name Anders had not recognized, and since the dwarf was not her lover, it seemed that she was still free. If only... He pushed the thought aside. She was alive, and their son was alive. He had hope again, and for now, that was enough. The rest would come if it was meant to be.
"Carver... is right that you should come back to Lowtown tonight," she said, unable to look at him now, her gaze cast toward the floor. "Whatever you have to say, you should say it to all of us."
"I have one more patient to treat," he said gently, "but I'll go with you after that."
They watched as he returned to his healing work. In spite of herself, Caitlyn felt her heart throb at the sight of Anders casting healing spells on the sick refugee, an elderly woman. The patient awakened from the sleep he had put her under—fortunately, neither of the patients had actually witnessed this scene, due to his use of sleep spells to make it easier to heal them—and with a compassionate smile on his face, he walked her and the other patient, a man with a missing arm—an Ostagar veteran? she wondered—to the exit. He closed the doors and turned back around.
"I... need to get some things," he said, giving her a curious look. "I'll be ready in a moment." He pulled back a strip of cladding that looked identical to the rest, but apparently led to a secret sleeping area for him. He emerged momentarily, stuffing one small pouch into the pack slung over his back and holding a second, fatter leather pouch while looking very somber and almost reverent. She was about to ask him what it was when he stuffed it into his pack too. He picked up his staff.
Varric glanced from the two Hawkes to Anders and back again. "I'll just return to my room at the Hanged Man," he said. "Best of luck to all of you."
After Varric's departure into the Hanged Man, it was a silent walk for the other three of them in the darkness of night. Caitlyn was not even sure what to think. Her emotions were swirling tumultuously, a storm inside her. Anders had better have a damn good account of himself, on one hand—and even then, she was not sure she could forgive him for not being there for her family. But at the same time, he was alive. He was here. Whatever disaster had befallen the Fereldan Circle, he had escaped it. He was a Grey Warden, free of the Circle forever now, as he had wanted—and he seemed happy to see her. It was possible, she allowed, that circumstances really had conspired against him for four years, if he was so happy to see her at last.
But if that were true, that meant that he had suffered as she had for four years—which meant that her own massive rage, cultivated and cooked to simmering perfection, was unjustifiable and undeserved. What then? How could she ever let go of that without feeling an equally massive wave of guilt for having nourished it for so long?
And Maker knew she was a different person now in some ways. She was darker and more cynical, less carefree, less... selfish, really. If she could get the Amell estate back and become a Kirkwall noble, she intended to use that power to improve the situation for mages. It was an ambition that she would not have dreamed of harboring without the suffering of the past four years. There were other differences too, and a surge of guilt suddenly filled her as she thought about Leliana. Maker, what would he think of her for moving on to someone else, if he had been locked up in the Circle in agony at being torn from his lover and child? Especially since she had deliberately left behind his mother's ring and the gift he had made for her with his own hands? And why do I care what he thinks? her angry side asked.
As they approached the area of Lowtown in which Gamlen lived, Carver spoke. "We're almost there," he said. "I think I should go inside first and... let Mother know what to expect." They reached the doorstep. "Here it is."
Caitlyn nodded to him, and he went inside. Anders turned to her.
"I... before we go inside... is there a person, someone else, I should know about?" he asked in a low voice.
She understood what he was asking and shook her head. "There's no one." Anymore, she added in her thoughts. She really, really did not want to have to tell him about Leliana. "You?"
He shook his head.
Carver emerged into the door frame. "She's shocked, but she's all right," he said. "Uncle Gamlen is passed out drunk in his room. To the Void with him." He glanced from his sister to Anders. "Mal... my nephew... is still awake. I suppose you'll want to meet him."
"You don't say," Anders replied.
Even in the darkness, Caitlyn could see Carver's eyebrows rise on his head and a faint smirk form on Anders' face. It was so achingly familiar and normal that it was almost possible to forget everything that had happened.
Almost.
She took a deep breath and walked into the house.
