Love, what exactly was love but a form of enslavement. Caged to where you once stood free by the emotions that bound you to someone else. You were at their mercy, at their beck and call, whatever they wanted, you felt compelled to do it. How harsh it felt, how lonely it left you but this seemed to all be a distant past. Now all that remained was a hollow shell, an empty feeling in her chest where her heart once beat. She was no one's slave. She was no one's lover. Her body was an empty cage.

All she had done, what was it for? She had hoped it to be for a larger purpose. She had wanted to defend the weak and helpless, and make the lives of those in Kirkwall better but all she had done was leave the city in chaos. She had started an uprising and left while the city burned. She had saved the one who destroyed the chantry and now travelled with him. They had all left her but him. Bethany had joined the fighting for the mages' cause after traveling with her for awhile. She hadn't been able to stop her sister, so how could she have hoped to stop the others? Isabella was the first however. At the sight of the Qunari artifact, Isabella had turned on her and left her to face the mercenaries as she ran away to the dock. She wasn't bitter about that, but she was bitter about the taste it left in her mouth. He had described this to her before, his revenge he said had tasted "like bitter ashes," how appropriate that her heroism now tasted that way. Aveline had taken her leave next. Aveline was to meet up with her husband in Ferelden. They had to be living a nice life, Aveline reinstated to her old position under the rule of the kind King Allister. Merrill had decided to leave after that, and Varric had followed her off stating that she couldn't survive on her own, but there was more to it than that. She had heard their chatter in the streets when they had once walked together. So now all she had was Anders, and she could see the way he looked at her. He stared at her with eyes full of regret and sorrow. If it wasn't those eyes it was the hateful eyes of Vengeance, telling her how he felt she was in his way to Justice with a single look. He was going to be next to leave, and she did not fault him for it. She had wished he had left awhile ago, but he stayed around for some reason unknown to her. Maybe it was because he felt regret over the choices he forced upon her, or maybe it was that he still held some affection for the woman he had seen in Kirkwall.

That woman was dead however…