( anders can't help but think this is the most productive conversation the two of them have ever had. it's unlikely that this is due to a lack of hawke — very, seriously unlikely. it's simply a coincidence that it's taken being transported to another dimension in order to get two words out to one another. even then, they haven't touched on anything controversial. no discussion of mage rights, or the state of the imperium, or the way that fenris is not, in fact a, a slave.

such topics will send the spiraling back to square one, surely. )

No, that's not...

Hawke and I never— we were never anything, truthfully. Never did anything, either.

( though his dreams love weave a narrative where things go differently. )

He was far less enamored with me than I with him.