The apprentice with the dark mop of curly hair had snuck down the see him again. She'd barely spoken to him last time except to pass some food through the bars to him with a whispered, "Sorry that it's cold, I couldn't sneak down until after the second patrol." He'd barely had time to respond with a faint thank you before she'd scampered off into the darkness again towards the stairs.
This time, she seemed a bit more brave. She hardly recoiled back from the hand he reached through the cell's bars at all, when she offered him leftover biscuits. The apprentice wrung one of the wrapped braids that hung down to her collarbones between her hands after they were empty. "Oh!" She whispered, with a nervous, wavering laugh that made Anders wonder how long it'd been since she last got the chance to use it for real. "The templars were wrong, you hardly scowl at all!"
"I save all of my most ferocious expressions for the templars," Anders reassured her when his mouth was slightly less full of biscuit, and grinned when that earned him a giggle. "What's your name?" He added, tearing the next chunk in half to make it go further.
"Bethany," the apprentice said back in a slightly louder and more confident tone, though her smile still shook at the corners when she peeked back towards the stairs. "Bethany Hawke. I've been here since I was five or six or so, I suppose...? It's hard to keep track when you're not supposed to celebrate namedays properly anymore. I can't even make pie the way my father did," she said all in a rush, then apologized again, seemingly on reflex. "Sorry, sorry! Everyone says I talk too much when I'm nervous."
"It's fine. You're fine," he smiled, trying not to laugh at her. Half out of relief just to hear another friendly voice after... a week, maybe more? It was difficult to tell. "Honestly, it's a lot better than talking to myself down here. Though occasionally there's the cat."
Bethany perked up. "The cat?"
"Mr. Wiggums. Have you seen him around the library?"
She started to shake her head, then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe? There's a bunch of mousers, and everybody seems to have different names for them. Like they're starting a collection. But I'll keep an eye out for him, if you'd like to see him? What does he look like?"
"Orange and big, bigger than you'd expect," Anders replied with the first touch of genuine affection she'd heard from him. He left the hand holding the other half of the biscuit drop a bit as he smiled. "He's spoiled rotten, too, I bet he'll come running as soon as he sees you have a treat or pets waiting for him, same as any of the rest of us would," he finished with a laugh she must not have placed, because she just looked at him with a strange, lopsided tilt to her smile that evened out when he blinked at her.
"It's nothing," she said with another one of those uneven bursts of laughter half hidden behind one hand. "It's just... you talk about him like a friend. It's nice."
"In Kinloch, you need every friend you can get," he said grimly, and Bethany Hawke could only nod.