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Hawke doesn’t like to be taken care of.
And she doesn’t seem to like taking care of herself, either. Whether she knows that remains to be seen, but everyone else does. Even the gossips in Hightown know it - they scoff as she runs by and whisper to each other about how little sleep she must get to look like “that”. And it’s ridiculous, because Hawke is a beautiful woman, well-rested or not - those same gossips could pay a thousand sovereigns and never come close to matching her natural beauty. But… they have a point.
According to Varric, at least, who has been trying to convince Anders to do something nice for Hawke ever since they got back from the Deep Roads. “Her brother was just taken away by the Templars. Don’t you think she deserves something nice, Blondie?” he says while Anders washes his bloody hands in a bucket of murky water. This is not the time nor place to be talking about something like this, Anders thinks, but Varric doesn’t seem to care. “And don’t you want to be that person for her?”
Anders grabs a cloth to dry his hands. “Sorry, Varric,” he begins, “but I’m not going to take relationship advice from a man who named a crossbow after his ex-lover.”
“Hey! Bianca’s a good name.” Anders turns around to find Varric frowning at him. “A name so good that it needed no inspiration."
He rolls his eyes. “I have nothing to give Hawke,” he continues, tossing the cloth aside and reaching back to tie his hair up again. It had come undone at some point during the birth - the baby was probably christened with a couple strands of his long blond hair. “I’m a poor apostate and runaway warden that lives in the sewers. The best I can do is give her a break from operating right under the Templar’s noses, which is what I’ve been doing for a week now.”
“If you think she likes that, then you don’t know Hawke at all,” Varric replies. “She likes danger. She likes trouble. It might sweep her off her feet before you do, if you don’t act quick enough.”
Anders would roll his eyes a second time if the idea of someone or something sweeping Hawke off her feet didn’t make his chest tighten and his stomach sink. He clears his throat and turns away again before Varric has a chance to notice and realize triumphantly that he managed to get under Anders’ skin. “We’ll see,” Anders says, trying to sound unaffected. “Either way, I’m rather busy right now. Can you go find Fenris and irritate him instead?”
Varric shakes his head. “Mark my words… you people will come to appreciate all my wise advice one day, but it’ll be too late for any more.”
With Varric gone, Anders is left alone with his thoughts. Although he hates to admit it… the dwarf has a point. Hawke is too busy solving problems for other people to take care of herself, and while Isabela and Aveline and Merrill are too busy with their own business to help her out, Anders isn’t. And he likes Hawke. A lot. An unhealthy amount, according to Justice. He should do something for her as a way to repay her for her kindness - like buy her a meal, or give her a gift…
Then Anders remembers that he doesn’t exactly have the money to do either of those things, so what else is there for him to do?
A list of things he knows about Hawke:
She has a dog, a brother, a mother, and a particularly stubborn and bad-mannered uncle. She once had a sister and a father (obviously), but the two of them died before the Hawkes came to Kirkwall. She is kind-hearted, beautiful, and an incredibly skilled mage, despite not being trained in the Circle. She gets cold easily, can sleep from sunrise to sunset without waking up once, and likes chocolate, but especially chocolate that’s made in Antiva. Her favourite type of meat is lamb. She loves the colour yellow and despairs when it’s raining. She misses Ferelden, but likes the Free Marches, and says it’s partially because of “the company”, which Anders isn’t sure means him but prays to the Maker - who he doesn’t even believe in - that it does.
Now what from that list is something he can give her? Or do for her? Or something to repay her for all of her kindness and help?
Varric buys her chocolate already - he has an associate who delivers it by the crate to Gamlen’s house every month. And there isn’t much lamb to be found in Kirkwall, because there’s no land flat enough in the Vinmarks for lambs to be raised and then killed for their meat. He can’t exactly make it stop raining whenever it does, and it doesn’t matter much when they’re inside, anyway, so that isn’t much of a gift. He can’t bring Bethany and her father back from the dead; he has no magic to teach her that she doesn’t know already. And while he offers his services to Hawke whenever she needs them, she’s still gone above and beyond for him more times than he can count.
So what’s left?
Eventually, he’s desperate enough to hunt Varric down and ask him for advice. He regrets it as soon as his mind is made up - he’s sure the dwarf will lord it over him for the next age - but he has no other choice. It’s been driving him insane for two days now, and if he doesn’t find a solution soon, he’s going to lose his mind. Literally, because Justice doesn’t like how distracted Anders has been thinking about it.
When he opens the door to the clinic, he finds Hawke already standing in front of him.
“Hawke!” he exclaims, feeling his face flush despite himself. “I - What are you doing here?”
“Um…” Hawke looks pale. And shifty. Why does she look pale and shifty? Why is she acting suspicious?
“What is it?” Anders asks, hackles raising. She wouldn’t lead the Templars to him, right? She wouldn’t betray him, right? After everything he’s done for her, the time they’ve spent together -
“I…” She blinks hard. “I… was stabbed.”
Anders stares at her. “What?”
She looks down at her torso and pulls her hand away from her tunic, revealing a bloodstain on the fabric that looks very wet - and very new. “I was stabbed,” she says again, looking up at him. Without her putting pressure on the wound, the bloodstain starts to spread. “Can you help me?”
Hawke is the only person in the entire city - perhaps all of Thedas - who would tell someone about being stabbed with so little urgency and so little expectation of help that Anders could laugh if he wasn’t scared out of his mind. “How could you even ask that, Hawke?” he says, wrapping an arm around her waist and helping her limp into the clinic. “I’d do anything for you, you know that. How did this - who hurt you?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head as he deposits her on a cot and pushes her down onto her back. “I was on my way down here to see you, and… I think it was the Coterie. I don’t know.”
At least it wasn’t Templars, or one of her many other enemies. At least she managed to escape with only one stab wound and not more. He doesn’t dare ask about what happened to the other guy - or guys - and instead shrugs his jacket off and tosses it onto the chair before rolling up his sleeves. “Can I push your shirt up?” he asks, and she nods. He eases it up slowly over her stomach and her chest, careful not to spare a glance higher than her navel. “You’re going to be okay, Hawke. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
He doesn’t know whether he’s promising her or himself, but either way, it seems to make her feel a bit better. Or maybe she’s just closer to passing out. Either way, she relaxes against the cot and tilts her head to watch him with half-lidded eyes as he crosses the room to wash his hands, grabbing a cloth afterwards to dip it into the wash bin and then heading back to her. “I’m just going to clean it to see what we’re dealing with,” he explains, “if it’ll be a simple heal or not. But you’ll be okay. You will.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that,” she says with the hint of a smile. Anders blushes.
When he’s finished cleaning, he leans down closer to examine the wound. It’s quite a long gash, but thankfully looks fairly shallow - it shouldn’t cause her much more grief after he closes it. “I’m going to close the wound now,” he says, rolling up his sleeves once more and rubbing his hands together so they’re warm when he touches her. “Do you mind if I -”
“Anders, you don’t have to ask.”
“Alright,” he says. “Here we go.”
He presses his hands to the cut and tilts his head back, eyes fluttering shut. He tries to relax himself, to focus on healing her before he lets himself think of anything else, but he’s shaking. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s because he’s terrified at the idea of anyone hurting her or because Justice is terrified that anything means more to Anders than the mage cause, but it’s certainly not going to help the situation, so he squeezes his eyes shut even tighter and takes in a deep breath. “Focus,” he mutters to himself, feeling the familiar warmth of healing magic flow into his hands and flood into the space of her open wound. “Focus, focus, focus…”
Healing can be exhausting sometimes. Just two days ago, he had to stand with his hands splayed open on the stomach of a new mother and wait for her insides to knit themselves back together while her baby cried in their cradle. An injury like this is easy in comparison - if not emotionally, then at least physically. After a few more moments, Anders opens his eyes and pulls his hands from Hawke’s torso - sure enough, there’s no trace of the wound besides a little dried blood on the leather of her belt. He smiles in relief, reaching up to wipe a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“There you go,” he says. “Good as new. Be careful sitting up, though - you’ll still feel it for a few more hours, even if the wound is gone.”
Hawke looks down at her stomach and then glances up at him, a smile spreading across her face. Maker. She has a beautiful smile. “Thank you, Anders,” she tells him with a tilt of her head. “I’m glad I came to you.”
He sits on the cot beside her and places a hand on her ankle. “You can always come to me, Hawke,” he responds. “Always. No matter what.”
She lays her hand on top of his. She has beautiful hands, too - long, delicate fingers. Anders can hear Justice screaming at him inside of his head, insisting that he stop thinking so much about Hawke when there are other things to worry about, but he ignores it. He hates the Templars; he’ll never stop hating the Templars. But for a brief moment, as he looks at Hawke, he forgets entirely that there’s a world outside of the clinic with anything worth hating.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Anders continues, “why did you - what made you want to come down and see me?”
Hawke blinks at him before the memory seems to return to her. “Oh - Varric told me to,” she says, and he silently curses the dwarf in his head. “I can’t remember why…”
“Figures,” he replies. “Varric likes to stick his nose in everything.”
She tilts her head. “What do you mean by that?”
“Erm - nothing, nothing.” Anders stands up and walks to the wash basin to clean his hands. “Either way… I’m sorry you got hurt coming to see me.”
“Anders.” He can hear her stand up behind him. “It’s Kirkwall. I could get hurt anywhere. It’s not your fault.”
Isn’t it? If he didn’t spend so much time mooning over her, Varric wouldn’t have noticed his… feelings, and if Varric didn’t notice Anders’ feelings, then he wouldn’t have told Hawke to come down here to visit him, and if she didn’t come down to visit him, then she wouldn’t have gotten hurt…
“And… I thought you were avoiding me.” Anders whirls around to find her standing behind him, a frown on her face. “You haven’t spoken to me since we returned from the Deep Roads… I was worried something was wrong.”
“No, no… Nothing’s wrong,” he reassures her. Then, he adds, “Nothing more than usual, at least.”
“But you were avoiding me,” she repeats, “right?”
He looks at her for a long moment before sighing, his gaze breaking away. “I wasn’t avoiding you,” he clarifies, “I was - I was giving you space. After everything that happened in the Deep Roads, and after hearing about Carver, I wanted to give you a break from being in constant danger. Varric told me that it was foolish, but…”
“So that’s what you meant about Varric sticking his nose in everything.”
His face grows hot. “Yes… that’s what I meant.”
Hawke stares at him, and he finally musters up the courage to glance back over at her. He can’t tell what she’s thinking. That’s one thing he’s learned about Hawke - you never know what’s going on in her head, no matter how hard you might try to figure it out. Which Anders does, because he likes her more than he should, and wants to know everything about her that he can. Like that she likes chocolate, and lamb meat, and sunshine, and cares that he avoided her even though he’d convinced himself - or tried to convince himself - that she didn’t notice. Whatever that means.
“I didn’t like not seeing you,” she says. “I… you’re my best friend, Anders. I don’t care how much danger it puts me in. I like being with you, talking to you. And I worry about you being down here alone. I don’t know what I would do if the Templars took you away.”
“They’d never take me,” he tells her. “Not without a fight.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
He sighs. “No, I’m sure it’s not.”
Hawke takes a step closer to him, and it nearly takes his breath away, because he can feel it. He can feel her near him without even having to touch her. He doesn’t know if it’s her magic or the strength of his feelings for her, but Maker’s breath… he would know Hawke was near if he was blind and deaf. How did he ever live without her? How did he manage to avoid her for a week? How could he ever get away with avoiding her ever again?
“Don’t avoid me anymore,” she says, her voice soft.
“I won’t,” he replies, his voice even softer. “I couldn’t if I tried.”
He could kiss her. She’s so close that he could kiss her. He hasn’t kissed anyone since Karl, and - that was a long time ago. He’s not even sure he’d know how to kiss anymore, but he could do it. He could. He wants to -
“I was thinking,” she continues, taking a step back and looking around, “that maybe I could come help you in the clinic. I can only take so much of Mother crying and blaming me for Carver leaving before I start to lose my mind. I don’t know much healing magic - Father tried to teach me, but we focused more on other things. Maybe…” She turns back around to face him. “You could keep teaching me? Pick up where we left off?”
Ah. It makes sense now. If she was an adept healer, she could have healed her wound herself - no wonder she needed him. He lets out a long, agonizingly slow sigh to calm himself down and tries to look like he wasn’t just thinking about kissing her and doing other unspeakable things to her, both for his sake and for her sake and to avoid hearing about it from Justice anymore than he already does and is. “I’d be happy to teach you, Hawke,” he replies, forcing a smile. “If that’s what you need from me.”
“It is,” she responds. “That way, I'll always be able to take care of you the way you take care of me.”
His smile becomes real when she says that.
After a little more conversation, Hawke decides to head back home to Lowtown - though not without Anders giving her one of his tunics to wear and insisting that he walk her back to Gamlen’s, because he hates thinking about her being out on the streets alone again tonight. Neither of them say much of anything, because Kirkwall can be a truly terrifying place after dark and they’re both worried about getting jumped by the Coterie or the Templars or… well, just about anyone else, but it’s nice, being with her after being without her for so long; knowing that she cares very deeply about him too. She didn’t say in what way, of course, and he’d be surprised if a woman like Hawke with a head like hers on her shoulders was interested in an apostate, but she still called him her best friend.
He never dreamed of having a friend again after Karl. Having a best friend - having Hawke - is like a dream. It’s what he needs right now to keep him grounded, to keep him from being too reckless and getting himself killed or captured before he can do anything that truly matters. It’s what he needs for the cause. Someone he can count on, no matter what.
It helps that she’s beautiful to look at, too.
He walks back to Darktown with his staff in his hands and one eye trained on the shadows, but he makes it back to the clinic unscathed. It feels lonelier, darker without Hawke. He sits on the cot where he had healed her and grabs her tunic, staring down at the bloodstain on it before folding it in half and standing up to tuck it away in a chest where he keeps his most prized possessions. He’ll clean it for her tomorrow, give it back to her when she comes to the clinic next - or maybe he’ll keep it as a reminder of all that he has to lose.
Hawke, his best friend. His confidant. The woman who means more to him than anyone else ever has. Maybe he can’t buy her chocolate or fresh meat or make the sun shine every day, but he can protect her from the Templars. He can protect as many mages, mages like them, as he can from the Templars. He can make this world a world that welcomes them, that celebrates their power instead of punishing them for it.
He'd like to see Varric do that. He'd like to see him try.