I don't normally leave Author's notes but a minor trigger warning below, anyone who's played Origins knows about Hespith and the implied violence that happened to her and others. So please feel free to skip this chapter.

"I hope you are happy now, my dear menace." Zevran's tone dripped with sarcasm. It was like the old parts of him were finally seeping through. The liar, the assassin- the thief.

Vethari was just walking aimlessly at that point trying to escape the pressure building up inside her. "How ever did you know?" She retorted, finally halting as she reached the old windmill abandoned in a dried out field a years ago. She'd gone bear hunting with Alistair and Morrigan here once. Petals, her dog, had been alive still. He'd led them straight into a spider's den. That hadn't been nearly as funny, but in that moment it didn't feel so long ago.

Zevran took her arm and turned her around, and then all the venom in his demeanor disappeared and he let her go to run his fingers through his hair. He gripped the back of his neck, and remained that way. Quiet. There was no way for her to decipher what he could have been thinking. She shifted, glancing around as the old memories swirled around her into an uncontrollable wave. The Inquisitor was calm, collected and able to clearly be the very thing she had bled for. It made her feel sick, no, the Calling made her sick. Even now her skin had it's that ill hue. The taint was in her veins, a damned blighted green.

"Of course, I'm not happy." Vethari finally admitted, hugging herself. "I've led us both down a path of despair. I promised you once that with me you'd always feel safe and that we would travel all over Thedas."

"So things didn't work out how we wanted but there is still a chance, no?" He risked taking her hand in his, pulling her close against him. She didn't have it in her to pull away anymore.

"Let's face it, Zev. I will die and I don't want to do all of this to you again!" She practically yelled.

"Again? Vetri whatever are you even talking about, every time we talk you make even less sense. "

"Did you see Leliana's reports, where they want us to go look for this Solas? Ancient Ruins, cave systems - possibly even the Deep Roads themself. I won't go back there, not again."

In all her years of carrying the mantle of Warden Commander, she did not forget the face of poor Hespith. She'd been Branka's lover, and Oghren's cousin. Her fate would be no different. Her first trip down there she had still been with Alistair. She'd spent so many countless, sleepless nights desperately clinging to Alistair and suffocating his goodwill. His light had burned bright enough that no one would see her own darkness that she carried.

It worked until it didn't, and with every step back to Denerim for the Landsmeet she had felt tiny shreds of her sanity disintegrate.

First day, they come and catch everyone

It was Hespith's face she saw at night while she tried to sleep. Those horrible lines constantly repeating back to her. Why was it that Zevran didn't wake up in a cold sweat almost every night with the same nightmare.

"We have braved the Deep Roads before, and naturally lived to tell the tale." His voice broke through her thoughts and Vethari gripped his back, bunching his shirt in her fists.

"I won't go back there..."

Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat.

As Zevran held her in his arms, she was being pulled into the recesses of her mind where the nightmares lay in waiting. Sometimes the Archdemon appeared, speaking to her about it's insidious intent to lay waste to all that lives. It was dead but only in reality. The worst was when her own companions would reach out in her dreams and damn her to the voids below for their blood on her hands. It clawed at her, how Ogrhen would come stumbling towards her with his bottles of alcohol, drowning in the liquid. He would never would find peace again. She'd robbed him of that chance by letting him take part in the Joining, instead of encouraging him to be better like she had in the beginning. Doomed to follow the Calling. His child grew up fatherless because of her.

Third day, the men are all gnawed on again.

Zevran was speaking to her, but he was distant and her vision as blackening around the edges. There was a different voice calling her. It sang. It beckoned. It claimed.

Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate.

Anders' blood coated her corrupted soul too. The young mage had wanted freedom. She had given him the same gilded cage Duncan had lulled her into. Anders wanted guidance which is why he'd asked her about her thoughts on Justice and her response had been to do whatever it takes. In the years that passed his letters to her had become more erratic, becoming a manifesto of his thoughts on the treatment of mages. He'd pleaded for her to come to Kirkwall to help them. She had refused, but Zevran went. He had risked the Crows ire just to assess the state of Kirkwall. The Champion had personally helped him back home and still she ignored Anders. Now he was a martyr.

Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn.

"Vethari!" Zevran's voice was more deliberate, but she felt her body crumple and her lungs burn. It was about time she succumbed.

"I killed them all!" she was gasping for the air no longer granted. It was no wonder that at the end Alistair had looked at her with so much disgust, that after he'd agreed to the ritual with Morrigan he'd insisted that they never have contact again. She had used him to distract herself from the reality of the person she really was.

Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams.

"Why…Zevran? Why are you still here… you could be happy without me." He was responding but she felt like sinking into the sand beneath her feet and going to that thing that called. It would be retribution for her sins.

Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew.

Zevran was gone. A distant memory. There was only the the cold grip of the song of the abyss. It caressed the her mind as her life flashed across her eyes and all that was looking back was a demon with daggers. It killed and clamoured over others to pursue happiness it had not earned. What would her life have been like if she never met Duncan. If the noble bastard hadn't crashed her wedding and murdered her husband to be.

Eighth day, we hated as she is violated

Killing Branka had been the right thing to do, beheading Loghain had been the ethical thing to do. Madness is culled before it can lead to insanity. She was next.

Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin.

It was over.

Now she does feast, as she's become the beast.

Hands gripped her and she fought against them, as the sweat poured down her face and stuck her clothes to her body. They were pulling her into the Void, laughing with each tug.

Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your dreams