Author's Note: it has been a long, long time since I've written or updated anything across any fandom. I've been replaying the Dragon Age series and remembered this story. After reviewing it, I discovered I had several chapters written and never posted. So... I deleted the old one from here and began revamping everything.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Not for him and certainly not for her. They came from different worlds, never mind the subtle similarities or slight factors that seemed to give them common ground. He was an apostate mage on the run and a former Grey Warden to boot. Well, there was no former because once a Grey Warden, always a Grey Warden, he simply wasn't an active Warden as he liked to say. She was a refugee from Ferelden who had sought shelter in Kirkwall, where her maternal side had originated as nobility.

They should never have happened at all…

Isabeau Hawke, at the tender age of now 24, had spent her first year in Kirkwall basically working for free. Well, maybe not for free but it had sure seemed liked it most of the time. She and her sister, Bethany, had been repaying a loan that had gotten them -them being their mother Leandra, friend Aveline, and themselves- into Kirkwall. A loan that would never have been offered if not for their uncle Gamlen's dubious contacts and bad habit of falling into debt with people himself. He had paid HIS debts to his contacts by offering them up, popping them right into that seemingly never-ending cycle right along with his dirty backside. That loan had been repaid under the terms that they worked it off for a year, acting as mercenaries.

Beau had decided after that year was over that she was NEVER doing that again. For one, mercenary work had seemed a lot cleaner than smuggling but the reality of it was that it was just as dirty, if not dirtier. Athenril, the smuggler she had met a year ago when deciding which life of slavery she wanted, had made it clear they didn't deal in certain things, like people, which had been great but somewhat shady. Mercenary work was all about dealing with people, killing them mostly. Beau would be the first to admit that she wasn't that great a person but even she had had issues with some of the contracts they had taken on.

It had also been something Mother had positively despised, doubly so considering Bethany hadn't had a choice but to be involved. Leandra had hated that her homecoming had not been the one she had expected. She had thought to return to Kirkwall and live in both safety and luxury, something they had all been denied since…. Ever. At least for Beau and Bethany, they had grown up in a life lived on the run and knowing that the bad, poor times tended to outweigh the better moments. Until Lothering anyway, they had been doing very well there once they had finally settled in.

Leandra had hated the idea of them being mercenaries, forced to work even harder just to survive than before, especially after Lothering and what had occurred there. Like many others, they had fled to escape the Blight, escape the oncoming darkspawn that had poured forth after the doomed battle at Ostagar, and descended on their picturesque village. Beau had hauled arse back to Lothering after the destruction of Ostagar, her and Carver, running like the Archdemon itself was on their tail. They had arrived in time to grab their family and continue running, arrived in time to run straight into death and despair.

It had been in Lothering, or just outside of it, that they had lost Carver. The only boy, Bethany's twin, Leandra's baby. So really, Beau couldn't blame her mother for hating it all. Life here had sucked so far, especially for Leandra. She had to worry about Bethany winding up dead or worse, apprehended by the templars, and she was living in squalor.

For Beau, working as a mercenary had sucked because of the very little pay she got to keep on top of the dubious contracts, but it was also a line of work she was familiar with. She had been a 'special scout' for King Cailan's army back in Ferelden, so she was used to taking orders and she was also used to killing people, or as used to it as one ever got. At the time, it had seemed a preferable alternative to the smuggling route. Smuggling had seemed a cleaner sort of task but Beau had worried about smuggling people, children especially. Hindsight was a bit of a pain.

There were benefits however, benefits she was trying to exploit, such as being able to build a name for herself opposed to becoming just another Fereldan dog-loving vagrant like many of her countrymen had become known as. Pulling herself out of the gutter she had unwittingly been placed in had been necessary. She wanted to provide her mother and sister with something stable, something closer to whatever it was Leandra had been convinced was waiting for them here. She had made contacts during her time with Meeran, his clients had become hers and some of those people she had forged connections with remained friendly with her. She was hoping that when the need for a job arose, they would remember her. Given that when out seeking employment and a way into Kirkwall when they had first arrived Gamlen had not bothered to hide the fact that Bethany was a mage, Beau was hoping these clients would NOT remember that.

Another reason, the most important one, was that Bethany needed to be safe.

Bethany was a mage, an apostate, just like their father had been. Magic had run in Malcolm's family line as well as the Amell line, something Mother tended to gloss over whenever reminiscing about being from one of the most prominent families in Kirkwall. Anywhere one went, outside of the Tevinter Imperium, if he or she were a mage, they were expected to be a Circle mage and under the care of a templar, doing business that had been approved by the powers that be for mages. Mages who operated outside the Circle and the Chantry were known as apostates and considered dangerous. They were either to be brought under the Circle, and therefore Chantry, rule or executed. Neither option was meant for Bethany, not if Beau and Leandra had their way.

Kirkwall was no place for an apostate mage, let alone one trapped in the circle, or the Gallows, which was housed the mages of Kirkwall. That had been made abundantly clear the moment they arrived. Kirkwall was home to a very large contingent of templars, led by Knight-Commander Meredith, whom Beau had never had the pleasure of meeting, fortunately. It was well known that Meredith had next to zero patience, or tolerance, for mages within the circle itself. For apostates, there was very rarely mercy from the woman, supposedly. It had been these stories of Meredith that had put the Hawke family even more on edge.

For the last year, Meeran's protection had kept them under the radar but the year was over and she just wasn't interested in being a mercenary. At least not for him, she'd prefer less shady dealings and more coin kept in her pocket, thank you. Now they were on their own which meant the templars were becoming more of a problem every day. They needed two things in order to remain free and get themselves out of the slums of Lowtown: money and status. Obviously, money would buy status. Sadly, she didn't have money.

Admittedly, Beau was also trying to do something to appease Leandra's dislike of her. She wasn't sure when it had happened but somewhere along the way after Father had died, she had become the head of the family even though it should have fallen to Mother. She struggled under that weight, struggled to meet the expectations her father had placed on her and the ones she hadn't even known her mother had had of her.

Leandra had thought she was coming home to money. Even though she had all but thrown away the name of, and therefore any rights regarding, the Amell family, she had still expected Gamlen to welcome them home in comfort and style. As it turned out, Gamlen had lost everything, and he had lost everything. The family, the family home on top of ruining the family name; he had made the Amell's nothing more than beggars and laughingstocks. Leandra had been devastated.

Isabeau and Bethany, not so much disappointed but upset for their mother. They had never had all that much to begin with, just what they needed, and they had always been content with that. Now, all they wanted, was a space to call their own and some relative peace and safety. They had discussed it all at night, huddled together in the tiny bedroom on the even tinier bed they shared. There were various ways of making money, of gathering coin, it was a matter of how far they were willing to go and what they were willing to sacrifice morality wise.

Given that they had one measly blanket and tended to sleep with all their clothes on, literally every piece they each owned, when it got cold and the food tended to settle or was not enough, Beau figured she had yet to really reach a point she wasn't willing to cross. Outside of selling people into slavery of course, though if things got any worse, she might have to reconsider that. It was worse on nights when they could hear their mother crying from her own room. The house they now lived in, Gamlen's little shack, wasn't as large as their home in Lothering had been, not by any stretch of the imagination and that home hadn't been overly large either. So, with space being cramped, almost any noise could be heard in any part of the house. Gamlen slept wherever he passed out, which was sometimes in one of their beds, or in the main room. Beau had come home one night and found him curled up under the table.

They had heard rumors of a dwarf planning an expedition into the Deep Roads, which promised to be eventful if not prosperous. An expedition other mercenaries and refugees were trying to join with, for the very same reasons Bethany and Beau needed too. Status and coin.

"We must be in the right place," Beau said under her breath as she glanced to her right, where just beside her walked Bethany. As usual, Bethany's dark brown eyes were darting all over the place, always on the lookout for templars. Beau also watched, not about to let those clanking righteous bastards drag her sister off to the Gallows or execute her, she was just less obvious about the watching.

Isabeau -though she generally went by just Beau, pronounced the same as bow- was now unofficially the head of the Hawke family, something she had never wanted but found imposed upon her. When their father, Malcolm, had died three years before the Blight, she had had the duty of caring for the family resting on her shoulders. She was the eldest child, her younger siblings -Bethany and Carver- had been twins and Carver had been considered the baby of the family. Bethany had remained in the shadows because of being a mage while Carver had thrown himself into forging his own identity, rather making a name of himself around Lothering as something of a jackass.

Carver had definitely been a jackass. He had also died after throwing himself at an ogre when they had fled Lothering, like a fool.

Beau had found herself in an unwanted position, with an unwanted burden, and beneath it she had apparently flourished because she had found herself quite capable of making decisions and doing what needed to be done and there was nothing she wouldn't do to keep them safe, and together, that was equally important, the together part.

Well, nothing so far, she had yet to reach a point that made her stop and think more than twice. Close calls during that year with Meeran but never a third think, just the two.

She hadn't even really questioned it when Flemeth offered them a way out of the death trap they had basically wandered into when running from darkspawn. She had accepted the deal, pocketed the amulet and now… well, it had been over a year, she probably needed to get around to finishing up her end of that bargain.

Now that the Blight was over, they could someday return to Ferelden, maybe. They had heard that Lothering had been totally destroyed and the land tainted, so maybe they didn't have a home to return to anymore. Maybe she was stuck with making Kirkwall home. Beau hated that idea because she was not overly fond of Kirkwall.

"You hear that the qunari have been given their own…"

Beau ignored the gossiping shoppers she was trying to wind her way through on the way to the dwarves quarter. She had no use for the qunari, and they were the Viscount's problem anyway. During one of the season storms, a ship had struck the rocks that surrounded Kirkwall with the result of hundreds of qunari being stranded.

"That must be Bartrand," Bethany wasn't ignoring anyone but if it wasn't something directly related to her or her templar problem, she really didn't need to know, she just filed it away. She gestured towards a dwarf that was breaking free of a crowd, shaking his head in visible frustration.

When Bethany moved towards the dwarf, Beau reached out to stop her, taking her sister gently by the elbow. "Wait, let's get him alone, without any distractions," she suggested, eyeballing the unfamiliar faces before her, many of them at waist level. That was a little awkward.

"Beau," Bethany whispered, moving to drop back against a wall as they waited, feeling her sister leaning into her. She wished she possessed even a fraction of Beau's confidence, shaking her head as she eyed the scene before her. "What if… what if this doesn't work out, what will we do then?"

"Trust me, Bethie, he's going to take us on. We've got this."

"No! Andraste's tits, human!" Bartrand shouted, exasperation lacing his tone though he didn't turn around to give them even a backwards glance. Instead, he opted to pick up his speed, huffing when the one who had broached him simply fell into step with him. "Do you have any idea how many people want to hire into this expedition?"

"To many I daresay," Beau replied, sharing a look with Bethany.

"But we heard you're going into the Deep Roads," Bethany's calm and gentle voice was a bit hard to pick up and she realized it so she cleared her throat, speaking loudly. "Surely, you'll need all the help you can-"

Halting, Bartrand whirled around to face her, both women stopping so nobody was in a collision. "No, you're too late. I've already hired on as many people as I need," he snorted, looking them over from top to bottom. "This is the sort of deal that can make a man for life, I'm not about to take a chance and hire random humans, female humans at that!"

Beau was sorely tempted to break out a dagger and show him just what a random, female human could do when properly motivated but Bethany's hand on her shoulder stayed her. Instead, she took a deep, calming breath and reminded herself just what was at stake here, which meant she couldn't kick him over. Plastering a friendly smile on her face, she tried to keep the sarcasm from showing in her eyes as she said: "I'll buy you a drink before we head into the Deep Roads, everyone wins and who doesn't love a pint?"

Bethany silently groaned, trying not to shake her head. Beau's approach with people always varied and she never knew what to expect with her sister, though generally sarcasm was a safe bet. Today it was sarcasm and off-brand, slightly twisted humor.

Bartrand wasn't finding it amusing either it seemed, his icy blue eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. "Get in line, human. Half of Kirkwall wants to be my best friend now," he gave them another once over, this one a bit longer than the last and decidedly more focused, especially on their clothes and gear. "You're looking for a quick way to get out of the slums."

Personally, Beau thought she looked nice in her forest green, padded armor. It really brought out the green in her own eyes and went with her raven hair quite well. She would, however, also be the first to say that the peasant blouse Bethany was wearing, along with her ankle-length skirt, emphasized her sister's bosom just a bit too much.

"Find another meal ticket," he snorted, turning and striding away without so much as a 'piss off and goodbye'.

"Well," Beau had watched him go, turning to grin at her sister, eyes guarded so Bethany wouldn't see the desperation that was beginning to settle in. "I think that went alright, how about you? I should've given him my card…"

"Are you mad?" Bethany demanded, her own face displaying everything she felt, unable to hide it the way Beau did. Currently, anger and desperation were vying for control. "What are we supposed to do now, Isabeau? We've got nothing to stop the next person who tries to sell us out, no money, nothing!" Her voice was beginning to break from struggling not to cry, tears welling in her brown eyes. "This expedition was our last chance!"

Knowing this wasn't the time to spout off a witty one-liner or crack an inappropriate joke about selling her body, Beau stepped forward and hesitantly wrapped her arm around Bethany, trying to be reassuring. "Bethie, we've made a name for ourselves over the last year." She said softly, injecting confidence in her tone. "We will find something, trust me."

"I do trust you, Beau," Bethany replied after a long moment, managing a watery smile with an accompanying hiccup. She stepped back when Isabeau pulled away, wiping the wetness off her face as they began walking again. "We need coin, status, something we can hide behind."

"A big statue?"

They both really knew why, humor aside. As long as they were refugees, they were nobodies and easy pickings for the templars, the gangs, or just anyone looking to make a quick coin or who was feeling uncharitable and, in the mood, to cause trouble. They needed a way to pull themselves out of the mire and into safety.

"Maybe Gamlen knows someone who can talk to Bartrand for us."

Now that was just idiotic, Gamlen might have gotten them into Kirkwall, but even that had been at the expense of selling off their services for a years' time. It had also put him back in somewhat good grace with some of the people he owed money too. Beau shook her head, she wasn't about to get involved in all that again. "No, I don't think so."

"It can't hurt to ask Beau, it's not like we have a lot of options right now."

"No, it hurts, it hurts very much."