At Your Side (A Dragon Age fanfiction)

Epiphany

Hawke knocked on the door of Anders's office. The clinic was surprisingly quiet this morning, only a couple of patients in the beds.

The door opened a crack, one of Anders's brown eyes visible. "Oh, Hawke, it's you." He opened the door the rest of the way. His office was littered with papers scrawled with symbols and words in unfamiliar languages. Even the walls had been written on.

"You sent a message that you wanted to talk to me," Hawke said. He gestured her in. She walked gingerly, trying not to step on any of the papers. "You know, you could have just come to the house."

"I ... don't get out much these days."

That much was obvious. His skin was waxy and white, his stubble even more pronounced than normal, and his once-neat ponytail was a tangled mess. "What's going on?"

"I need your help. I'm trying something, and I thought you'd want to be part of it." His eyes met hers briefly and then skittered to the side, and Hawke steeled herself for a request it seemed certain she wouldn't like.

"What kind of something is this?" She considered cleaning off the extra chair, but she didn't want to touch any of those papers.

"It's time to be free of this curse. I've ... found a potion that can separate Justice and me, but I need you to help me gather the ingredients."

"I thought you said the merging between you two was irreversible."

He stood up, his features taking on an unusual animation. "I've done some research into the methods of Tevinter magisters, the only ones who have ever tried to unpossess someone without killing them."

To Hawke, Tevinter magisters meant only one thing: the people who had tortured Fenris. She pushed down the automatic bitterness she had learned from her lover. "And you found this potion?"

"Yes. It's ... dangerous, but in the end, it will be worth whatever it costs." His eyes were shining, staring into the air above Hawke's head, seeing visions. The hair rose on the back of her neck at his rapt expression. Maybe it was unfair to him, but she didn't trust this sudden energy. The only cause he'd ever shown this level of enthusiasm for before was that of freeing mages from Templars, not from the spirits in their heads.

"What will it cost?"

"What? Oh, not that much, really. I just need to track down some sela petrae and some drakestone."

"Come again?"

"Sela petrae is the active ingredient; it's made of concentrated manure and urine." Anders smiled at the face Hawke made. "Yes, it's not going to be lovely sparkly magic. Drakestone is collected on the walls of the Bone Pit."

"What's that, dragon sweat?"

"Actually, dragon excrement."

"Ugh. And you need me for what?"

"Protection, really. There are lyrium smugglers and mercenaries in the sewers with the sela petrae, and spiders and dragonlings in the Bone Pit."

"So, it's just a potion?" Hawke asked. "No ritual, no dark of night, none of that?"

"No. Just mix the potion, and Boom!" He smirked as at a private joke, and went on, "Then Justice and Anders can take our rightful place among free mages."