this is not justice,

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She doesn't want to know.

So she doesn't ask; better, she thinks, to occupy her mind with work, to keep her hands chapped and raw from water and the bristles of the brush she uses on the late nights she comes to the clinic and looks at him with such desperate exhaustion that it's clear this is what she needs, and she scrubs the filthy floors clean of blood and whatever other gore and dirt can be found there. Fist fights in the Hanged Man, half-hearted feuds over a spilled drink here or a lazy insult there, and she usually has a new bruise to sport, and it makes her feel a little bit more like herself.

Bethany would tell her not to blame herself, but Bethany is in the Gallows. Carver would do the same, probably with less patience than their sister, but he's dead, rotting on some hillside in Ferelden, his body left for the scavengers. (She dreams of him, sometimes, sitting on that hillside as she climbs it, face decaying under her gaze, smile wide but empty, and he says good to know I'm not even worth a grave and she wishes it was her left there instead.) Leandra has made her point of view clear, and Kat tries not to think about that most of all, lest she collapse under the weight of her mother's fury and her own self-loathing.

It'll pass, says Aveline. You'll heal, says Varric. She's not sure she wants to, just yet. Anders invited her out of the city, just for a moment, just long enough to replenish his stock of elfroot, and she'd taken the chance to be anywhere but there so quickly that she forgot that being out and functional under the sun would mean that she'd probably have to have a conversation. But now it feels like a sickness bubbling inside of her, and so she asks because she must.

         What herbs he’s out there to scrounge for, he's careful. He doesn't want to overstep his boundaries. He's been chastised by the roaming Dalish to not take from their ancestral lands without asking before, without offering some tribute to their Ancients or the bleeding Earth. A handful now, enough with his know-how to last the stretch of two weeks. Then he'll be back again. They don't understand the precedence his healing takes. What this all takes. Neither does he, maybe.

         Anders delicately places the elfroot in a pouch, tightens the strings so as to not bruise it. He takes a deep whiff and it somehow triggers a quiet gurgling his stomach. Some olfactory sensation crossing wires in his brain, burrowing into the empty pit of his gut like a reminder to eat. How many days? Two? It could wait two more. Everything tastes like slop these days. There’s an absent reminder in the back of his head that his appetite has been increasingly scarce since becoming one with Justice, but he quells the thought. It’s the rising conflict with the Templars, he’s sure of it. How could it be any other way.

“We all start with innocence, but the world leads us to guilt.”

“The world doesn’t punish wicked people.”

“Do you think you’ll get your own squad after what happened last night?”

“When you are near, my heart is at peace.” 

“She had to die!” 

“You’re a mystery, and I can’t have that.”

“Our choices always matter to someone, somewhere.” 

“I do believe this is going to be a fabulous evening.”

“Careful, he’s armed.”

“I was born into nothing, and it’s nothing I’ll return to.”

“Going to a party?”

“Coming from a party?”

“There’s always more to learn about pain.”

“I hope you don’t mind having a lady in your room.”

“You were making funny faces when you were sleeping.”

“May all the spirits guide you, and may your enemy’s head hit the floor without you taking a scratch.”

“Are you hoping to stab me in the back?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a lovely time.” 

“I’ve killed a hundred of your kind, and I’ll kill a thousand more before I’m gone.”

“I’ve lived a long, long time, and these are the moments I wait for.”

“You fascinate me.”

“Are all artists narcissists?”

“Strange how there’s always a little more innocence left to lose.”

“I’m just a little fish in a big pond.”

“Are you chasing something, or running away?”

“You move so silently. You could be a dancer.”

“I have no regrets. What about you?”

“What happens to scary monsters in the end?”

“I treat every sunset as if it’s our last.”

“When the music stops, we all fall down.”

“It’s that moment just before the light goes that matters most of all.”

“I’m enjoying our renewed friendship.”

“You have no right to take this from me!”

“Your life has taken a turn, has it not?”

“All things end, all things burn to ash. But you, my friend, burn bright.”

“There’s blood on all the coins that pass through here.”

“My mother warned me never to make an enemy of a witch.”

“My life is yours. Kill me or let me live, if it even matters to you.”

“I expect a good show.”