Fic: There Won't Be Sun
Title: There Won't be Sun
Characters/Pairings: F!Hawke/Anders
Rating: R (warning for suicidal characters)
Summary: They're on the run and part of a war that Hawke no longer wants. Anders watches Hawke slowly fall apart.
A/N: Written for a prompt on dragonage_kink which asked for a post-game suicidal Hawke. While I didn't push the prompt quite as far as I could have, I still want to warn for that.
When they first hear that the other Circles are starting to rise up, there is a sense of accomplishment. They've done something, changed the world, and, for a little while, Hawke can delude herself into thinking that this is a good thing.
They leave the others early on, only a few weeks out of Kirkwall, and Hawke makes plans with Varric and Isabela in case things are to turn out for the worst. She does not tell Anders of them, the little plots that the three of them cook up in their last days together. She does not tell him much at all, unable to do more than look at him in those days after what had occurred - at the Chantry, at the Gallows, it barely mattered which.
“We'll be all right,” she tells Isabela as she makes certain all of the few things she still has are packed away carefully. Her friend looks as though she does not believe her, not one bit.
“Hawke, if you need anything-”
“I'll send a letter to one of Varric's contacts.” She smiles, but it is a strained smile, stretched too tightly across her face. “Don't worry about us, Isabela. We'll be all right.”
Isabela's own smile is just a strained. “Remember, we're supposed to run off together, you and me and Anders.”
“Fearsome pirates of the sea?” Hawke laughs, brittle and humorless. “When this is all over...”
“You'll be my first mate.”
It's not a question, just a last desperate attempt before Hawke slips away forever.
“I promise,” Hawke says.
It is very likely an empty promise, but neither acknowledges it.
*
The first days are quiet, few words spoken between them. Hawke is drawn, bronze skin ashen, and Anders cannot find the words to breach the silence.
He wants to tell her things, so many thing - that Justice sleeps quietly within his mind for the first time in years, that he feels a sense of self and agency that he had thought lost long ago, that he cannot understand how she was able to forgive him for what he has done, to the world and to her - but whenever he looks to her, looks at her in the travelers clothing that is so different from the heavy robes he is used to her wearing, at the staff that looks more like a blade than anything else, he just cannot speak, so uncertain of what he could say.
I'm sorry is the most inadequate phrase, and he cannot say it even when it tries to claw its way up and out of his throat, only to die on his lips when her eyes cannot meet his.
On the fourth day he slips his hand into hers and she does not pull away.
It is not much of a victory, but as her fingers curl around his, Anders cannot help but feel that, maybe, things might be all right.
*
They stop in a village for supplies, as well as for information. They cannot simply disappear into the wilderness; the world is in the beginning throws of revolution and they must know what is going on.
But news travels slowly, more slowly than is convenient, and the village is not the most well connected. They can find out nothing about Sebastian, who Hawke worries over in the moments when she does speak, but the story of the Gallows has already spread. They hear their names spoken, sometimes in condemnation, some times with some sort of veiled approval.
No one here knows what they look like, though, and they do not use their real names.
People are fleeing Kirkwall - this, they already knew. With Meredith and Elthina gone, there is no one person in power.
Kirkwall will consume itself with months, they hear people say in passing conversations. The mages and Templars are out of control, others say.
But there are the whispers of revolution all around them, the Circle in Antiva has broken, and this is enough for Anders, enough for Justice. There will be change, and the spirit within him is content.
Hawke is not.
Still, he has seen her in her worst moments, and this is not as bad as she was after her mother died.
He tells himself this, but he is not certain if it is the truth.
“Talk to me,” he finally says, the night they stay in the town's inn. She has barely touched him the entire day, barely spoken to him.
There is silence for a long moment, her back turned to him as they lay next to one another on a mattress that would have been uncomfortable had they not spent the last week sleeping on the forest floor.
“And say what?” she says, finally, and it is a relief to hear her speak.
“ Anything,” he says, looking at the curve of her shoulder, the dark mass of her hair spread out of the pillow beside him. “I just want to hear you speak. You can yell at me, if you'd like.”
Silence, again, a long breath escaping her.
“There is no point in yelling at you.” The lines of her body are harsh, tense, and he wants to reach out and pull her to him. But he doesn't. “I've already done that, and it's done nothing.”
He wants to say things, tell her that he can't stand seeing her like this, that he needs to know how to fix this, that he's worried, but he doesn't know how to say any of that, or how much of it would simply fall on deaf ears.
So he finally just reaches out, tentatively brushing his fingers over her shoulder, just a light touch, and Hawke finally turns to him, and even in the darkness he can see the curves of her face.
“Tell me what you need,” he says and she presses her face against his chest. And she doesn't cry or shake, but he holds her there all the same, and it is the closest they have been in so long.
“I need you to stay with me,” she whispers against his skin, and he thinks that this is something he can do.
*
They cannot stay in one place for long, and so when the morning sun breaks the line of the trees they are already gone, disappearing from the village as quickly as they arrived. Sleep has made Hawke's eyes a little brighter, he thinks, and that is good.
They hear nothing for days as they travel, but the news of the Antivan Circle keeps at least Anders from despairing. But Hawke is still quiet, and not for the first time Anders wonders how she was able to hold everything together for those three years.
He misses her smiles and her laughter. But those things have been showing themselves less and less over the years, and now there are little more than bitter-tinged smiles that occasionally grace her lips.
They come across the first Templars that they have seen in weeks a few days later, leading a group of bound mages - and he knows some of the mages, they are from Kirkwall, and one of them he had once helped to escape the city -
Justice wakes.
And all the anger and hate bubbles up within him, but he tries to hold it back even as blue light threatens to spill out of his skin. He cannot-
But Hawke moves before he can.
He does not know what possess her to do so - there are six Templars and only the two of them, and she has stepped out into the path before them.
“Where are you taking these mages?” she asks - commands - and the Templars stop. Behind them, the mages cower, caught and bound, unable to cast.
“You,” one of the Templars says. “You are the Champion.”
“Yes,” says Hawke, and she smiles and it is terrible. “You will release these mages.”
The Templars laughs, but it is a nervous laugh. “Why would we do that?” she asks, and she sounds so very young - but she is a Templar, and every Templar must burn or no mage will be safe.
Justice crawls beneath Anders' skin, straining to be released.
“That's the Champion,” one of the other Templars says, his words a frantic hiss. “She killed the Knight-Commander.”
“Release them,” says Hawke. She has not reached for her staff yet - why has she not reached for her staff? - and another of the Templars laughs and Anders watches as they draw their swords and move -
He breaks from the cover of the trees - where he has waited, trying to calm Justice, trying to figure out some course of action - and slams his own staff into the ground, the crescent blades digging into the dirt, and ice rushes out to meet them, encasing their legs and crawling up their bodies until they are still statues.
“You will not touch her.”
Justice is bleeding out, barely contained, and he cannot hold him in -
And then he feels the air go still around him, an almost weightless feeling, and he knows this magic, knows that it is Hawke's, and the air goes thick around him, a dragging weight on his limbs.
It is only the edges of the spell that catch him, and his body feels heavy but does not fall. But the Templars are caught fast within it, drawn upward and then violently down, the ice on the first two cracking as they are thrown to the ground hard enough to stun, to break bones. From the corner of his eye, Anders sees Hawke draw her hands together and watches the Templars skitter across the ground as her magic tosses them about.
And then the young Templar releases a blast of holy energy that pulls all the magic from the air. Anders is far enough away that he only feels the residual effects of it, but Hawke is hit full and she is brought to her knees, completely drained of magic.
He moves faster than any of them expect, is by the Templar's side before she can push herself up from the ground, and he slams his foot down on her back, bringing his staff down until the largest of the crescent blades curves around her neck, points just barely touching the ground.
“If any of you move, I will kill her,” he says, and he must have gotten Justice in check or the Templar would already be dead -
“I know who you are,” the Templar says, her face pressed down into the dirt. “Murderer.”
He allows his staff to fall just slightly and the Templar goes still.
But holding one Templar's life in his hands is not enough to keep the others from acting, and there is movement from behind him - a Templar with a raised sword, no time think - and Anders turns, fire blossoming from his fingertips just as he applies all his weight to his staff.
He sees Hawke move from the corner of his eye - she cannot use magic now, but she holds her bladed staff like a sword, but she is no warrior and there is a Templar closing in on her-
Pain lances through his shoulder, but he barely feels it because Justice has taken over completely.
*
“Anders, wake up. Please, please wake up.”
He smells blood - tastes blood - and he is in pain. He opens his eyes and sees Hawke there, beside him, feels the warm glow of healing magic as her fingers move over his shoulder and his chest. He opens his mouth to speak and coughs, blood welling up through his throat and slicking his lips.
“Let me help.”
Hawke tenses, looks at someone who he cannot see, but then nods. More healing magic washes over him, knitting things back together, taking the edge off the pain.
“Who-” he manages to say, but nothing more, looking at this other healer through pain-blurred eyes. It is that woman - yes, he helped her once, the mage underground, years ago - who he had helped move out of the city. Miria - Miriam.
He looks back to Hawke, sees the fatigue on her face, the lines around her eyes as she concentrates. Her magic has come back - how long was he out? He opens his mouth again to speak, swallowing blood.
“Hush, Anders,” she says, voice harsh, ragged. “The mages are fine. The Templars are dead. Just rest.”
He wants to nod, but cannot even do that. Instead, he closes his eyes and allows them to heal him.
*
They pile the Templars bodies and burn them, and two of the mages bury the armor while Hawke and the other healer - Miriam, she has said her name was - move Anders' unconscious form off the road.
There are four mages - the healer, who looks to be only a few years younger than Hawke, a boy and a girl who look to be no more than sixteen, and a small boy who cannot possibly be older than six.
“That's the mage who blew up the Chantry,” Hawke hears the older boy say to the girl, and her heart squeezes painfully - is that all Anders will ever be known for? - but as much as she wants to jump to his defense she is far better served by concentrating on healing him.
He is so hurt, so pale, stained with blood that has dried and blackened against his skin, and just looking at him makes her heart hurt so much that she is certain it will crack in two.
What would she do if she lost him?
She has not thought about it, not really, avoided all thoughts of her decision to spare him - to stay with him - since they had fled the Gallows, afraid that if she thought about it she would only realize that she had done the wrong thing.
But seeing him now, closer to death than she has ever wished to see him, all she can think is that it would have killed her to kill him.
She cradles his hand in hers, runs her thumb over his skin, little bits of dried blood flaking away as she does so.
It's going to be impossible to get all the blood out of his clothes, she thinks, and it is the silliest, most unimportant little thought, and it makes her laugh, a half-mad, terrified little sob of laughter that catches in her chest and her throat.
“He will be all right,” the mage woman says - Miriam, she makes herself remember, because she has not been able to focus much on the others ever since she saw the Templar bring his sword down upon Anders' shoulder - and Hawke looks up at her.
Part of her wants to say that he hasn't been all right in years, but she doesn't. It would do no good.
Instead, she just tightens her grip on his still hand. “I know,” she says, even though she doesn't know. She's a healer, but never as good as him. Never good enough, not to save Carver from the taint, not save her mother, not to save anyone.
“Miriam, we should go,” says the girl, stepping close to them but still keeping herself as far from Anders and Hawke as she can. There is a wariness in her stance, and this in and of itself sets Hawke even more on edge.
“We will stay until these two are fit to travel,” Miriam says, a tight note of finality in her voice. The girl opens her mouth to speak, closes it, and looks over to the boy.
“That man blew up the Chantry, Miriam,” he says. “That woman killed Knight-Commander Meredith. They've endangered the lives of every mage in Thedas!”
“And yet that man is the reason why I and my son are even alive,” she says, and Hawke notices, perhaps for the first time, that the younger of the boys looks very much like the woman - the same eyes, a nose that, once matured, would look similar to hers.
“You...know Anders?”
Miriam nods, looking down at him and then back up at Hawke. “He was part of the mage underground when I...needed to escape the Gallows.”
“You said...your son?” She looks to the boy again, who is hanging back, the words of the others keeping him from wanting to be too close to them.
The healer nods again, but does not elaborate.
“We will stay with you until your Anders is no longer in danger, and then we must part ways,” she says. “It is the least that we can do for you.”
*
It takes awhile, but eventually Anders is up and well enough to walk. The other mages leave soon after he wakes, and Miriam - Miriam, he remembers her, a pregnant mage does not last long in Gallows, especially when the father is a Templar - takes a long moment to speak with Hawke before looking to him and smiling.
“Thank you,” she says, and they are gone.
They cannot travel fast - they stop often, him to rest, her to pour as much healing magic into him as she can. It is unnecessary, he is strong enough to heal himself, but she brushes his hands away.
“Let me do this, Anders,” she tells him, and even though there are dark circles under her eyes and she looks wearier and wearier every day there is such determination in her voice that he can't argue.
So he let her heal him and leans on her shoulder when he needs to. They head into the heavily wooded hills, and for a long time they see no one else.
They camp by a stream one night, and Anders finally has the chance to try to wash the blood out of his clothing. The feathers that adorn his coat are matted and ruined - there's little reason to try to salvage them, but he tries even so, leaving trails of red in the water.
Hawke is quiet again, ever since he was injured, ever since Justice had shown up again. And Anders wants to talk to her, but now Justice is a manic whisper in his mind again.
The river water is cold and his fingers have long since begun to numb, but he stubbornly tries to rinse the last of blood out of the fabric. His concentration is so focused on the stained, tattered coat that he does not notice Hawke until she speaks.
“You're fingers are going to freeze off if you keep up with that,” she says, and he looks up to find her perched on one of the large rocks that lines the riverbank, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them as she gazes at him and his coat.
“Mmm, they're still a little ways from falling off,” he says, raising one hand and flexing his fingers to prove that they still function. He's rewarded with a tiny smile, half hidden by the shadows that the evening light casts on her face.
“Anders,” she finally says as he pulls his coat from the river, water dripping down his arms and soaking his rolled up shirtsleeves.
“Mmm?”
“It can't happen again.”
He freezes, for a moment not at all sure of what she is referencing. What can't happen again? There are so many things that she could mean, and so many of them are things he does not want to hear.
“You need to be more careful,” she continues, still curled up on the rock, not even looking at him. “I'm not all that good at healing, you know. Not as good as you. If you get hurt like that again...I might not be able to fix it.”
He looks up at her, trying to catch her gaze. “Hawke,” he says, softly, quietly, uncertain of how to ask this, but it's something that he's been thinking about far too much, “why did you try to confront those Templars on your own?”
Her eyes dart to him, then she looks down and away, hiding behind her arms and her hair. “It's nothing,” she says, and he doesn't believe her, not at all.
It cannot possibly be nothing. He might forget things, or miss things, and sometimes he's too caught up in his own revolution to pay attention to things outside himself - distractions that try to catch at his mind, things incompatible with Justice - but he can tell that something is wrong. And it's not the same thing that has been wrong between them for so long, since he asked for her help and lied to her, trying to protect her even while he was using her for his own ends.
It's like something has broken inside her since they left Kirkwall, and he doesn't know how to fix it.
Once upon a time, he would have felt Justice's dislike for the woman well up within him at that thought, but not now. He feels the spirit's worry mix with his own. Ever since she stepped between the Knight-Commander and the mages of the Gallows, Justice has...become more accepting of her.
Strange, he thinks, and so terribly wrong how the thing that may have damaged her irreparably is what brings Justice's approval.
“Please, talk to me,” he says, the words a desperate plea, repeated far too often and being met mostly with silences and blank gazes. “Tell me what I can do.”
She gives a little choked laugh. “You can't do anything.” She pulls her knees closer to her chest, hides her face against them until he can barely see it at all.
He pulls his sodden coat from the river and drapes it over the rocks by his side, water rolling down grey stone, leaving dark trails in their wake. His fingers are still cold, numb, but he turns to Hawke and reaches out, brushing her hair back until he can see her eyes. “Let me try,” he says, and she tips her head up, eyes fluttering closed as he presses a kiss against her forehead. “Let me help.”
“You can't.”
“I can try,” he insists, setting his forehead to hers, cool fingers cupping her face. Her arms drop to her sides and her feet slide down the rock until she is no longer curled in upon herself.
“Can you put the whole world back together?” she asks him, breath hot upon his skin.
“It was never whole to begin with.”
She shudders and he feels it. “I don't want to be part of your cause anymore,” she says, and the words bring little stabs of anger from the part of him that is Justice. But he holds those thoughts back as best he can.
“Hawke-”
She pulls away from him and his hands drop to her shoulders. The light is dim around them, but he can still see the weariness in her eyes, the shadows under them. “I don't want to be part of this fight,” she says. “But you forced the choice on me, so I will live with it. I'll fight every Templar that tries to harm a mage, and I'll stand by you. But don't ask me to be happy. I'll give everything to this, just...don't.”
He turns his head to the side, eyes closed. There is so much she isn't say, so many thing implied, all the little details that scream out about how far from all right she has become. He misses her smiles and her jokes, her laughter, her joy. And he thinks, this is his doing, he's the one driving away all of her happiness and goodness, he has done this, and isn't there injustice in slowly destroying someone like her?
“You can go back,” he says softly, and she stills. When he looks back at her, her eyes are wide.
“What?”
“You can go back,” he repeats. “You made plans, with Isabela and Varric, in case anything went wrong.” He gives a small, humorless laugh at the look on her face.
“You heard that?” she says, voice very small, and she looks away from him. Even that small movement is enough to cause his heart to clench painfully; she has never been the sort to do this, to pull herself away from another person like this. She is brash and outspoken and she does not hide.
He doesn't know what to do, except to let her go.
“You weren't supposed to hear that,” she says, brushing her hair behind her ear, so very deliberately not looking at him. It doesn't matter that his hands are still on her shoulders or that they are so very close together - the inches between them could be miles for all she has closed herself off. “We made them...just in case.”
“But you could go,” he says, and he doesn't want to say any of this, doesn't want to let her walk away from him. But what he wants, far more than that, is for her to smile - to truly smile - again.
“I said I would stay with you.”
“I -” would let you go to see you smile, “-will not hold you to that.”
He begins to withdraw his hands, but she catches at them, holds them fast.
“Anders,” she says, “I'm not staying with you because of some promise I made to you. I'm staying because...because I want to stay with you. And as long as I'm alive, I can't escape this war that...that we have brought upon the world. So I'm going to stay with you because that is what I want to do. Besides,” and here she turns and looks at him, with the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips, one that doesn't reach her eyes but tries to, “you've done a million things worse than tell me I can leave, and I haven't left you yet. You'll have to try a little harder if you want me gone.”
Her fingers are warm around his, holding him fast. “I don't want you gone. I...want you to be happy again.”
Another broken smile. “That won't happen until this war is over,” she says, and she clings to his cold hands like a lifeline.
But the war will not be over for along time, not for years and years. He knows this, and so he thinks that he will try to be for her what she was for him in Kirkwall. He will be her support for as long as she needs. And he hopes that will be enough.
Characters/Pairings: F!Hawke/Anders
Rating: R (warning for suicidal characters)
Summary: They're on the run and part of a war that Hawke no longer wants. Anders watches Hawke slowly fall apart.
A/N: Written for a prompt on dragonage_kink which asked for a post-game suicidal Hawke. While I didn't push the prompt quite as far as I could have, I still want to warn for that.
When they first hear that the other Circles are starting to rise up, there is a sense of accomplishment. They've done something, changed the world, and, for a little while, Hawke can delude herself into thinking that this is a good thing.
They leave the others early on, only a few weeks out of Kirkwall, and Hawke makes plans with Varric and Isabela in case things are to turn out for the worst. She does not tell Anders of them, the little plots that the three of them cook up in their last days together. She does not tell him much at all, unable to do more than look at him in those days after what had occurred - at the Chantry, at the Gallows, it barely mattered which.
“We'll be all right,” she tells Isabela as she makes certain all of the few things she still has are packed away carefully. Her friend looks as though she does not believe her, not one bit.
“Hawke, if you need anything-”
“I'll send a letter to one of Varric's contacts.” She smiles, but it is a strained smile, stretched too tightly across her face. “Don't worry about us, Isabela. We'll be all right.”
Isabela's own smile is just a strained. “Remember, we're supposed to run off together, you and me and Anders.”
“Fearsome pirates of the sea?” Hawke laughs, brittle and humorless. “When this is all over...”
“You'll be my first mate.”
It's not a question, just a last desperate attempt before Hawke slips away forever.
“I promise,” Hawke says.
It is very likely an empty promise, but neither acknowledges it.
*
The first days are quiet, few words spoken between them. Hawke is drawn, bronze skin ashen, and Anders cannot find the words to breach the silence.
He wants to tell her things, so many thing - that Justice sleeps quietly within his mind for the first time in years, that he feels a sense of self and agency that he had thought lost long ago, that he cannot understand how she was able to forgive him for what he has done, to the world and to her - but whenever he looks to her, looks at her in the travelers clothing that is so different from the heavy robes he is used to her wearing, at the staff that looks more like a blade than anything else, he just cannot speak, so uncertain of what he could say.
I'm sorry is the most inadequate phrase, and he cannot say it even when it tries to claw its way up and out of his throat, only to die on his lips when her eyes cannot meet his.
On the fourth day he slips his hand into hers and she does not pull away.
It is not much of a victory, but as her fingers curl around his, Anders cannot help but feel that, maybe, things might be all right.
*
They stop in a village for supplies, as well as for information. They cannot simply disappear into the wilderness; the world is in the beginning throws of revolution and they must know what is going on.
But news travels slowly, more slowly than is convenient, and the village is not the most well connected. They can find out nothing about Sebastian, who Hawke worries over in the moments when she does speak, but the story of the Gallows has already spread. They hear their names spoken, sometimes in condemnation, some times with some sort of veiled approval.
No one here knows what they look like, though, and they do not use their real names.
People are fleeing Kirkwall - this, they already knew. With Meredith and Elthina gone, there is no one person in power.
Kirkwall will consume itself with months, they hear people say in passing conversations. The mages and Templars are out of control, others say.
But there are the whispers of revolution all around them, the Circle in Antiva has broken, and this is enough for Anders, enough for Justice. There will be change, and the spirit within him is content.
Hawke is not.
Still, he has seen her in her worst moments, and this is not as bad as she was after her mother died.
He tells himself this, but he is not certain if it is the truth.
“Talk to me,” he finally says, the night they stay in the town's inn. She has barely touched him the entire day, barely spoken to him.
There is silence for a long moment, her back turned to him as they lay next to one another on a mattress that would have been uncomfortable had they not spent the last week sleeping on the forest floor.
“And say what?” she says, finally, and it is a relief to hear her speak.
“ Anything,” he says, looking at the curve of her shoulder, the dark mass of her hair spread out of the pillow beside him. “I just want to hear you speak. You can yell at me, if you'd like.”
Silence, again, a long breath escaping her.
“There is no point in yelling at you.” The lines of her body are harsh, tense, and he wants to reach out and pull her to him. But he doesn't. “I've already done that, and it's done nothing.”
He wants to say things, tell her that he can't stand seeing her like this, that he needs to know how to fix this, that he's worried, but he doesn't know how to say any of that, or how much of it would simply fall on deaf ears.
So he finally just reaches out, tentatively brushing his fingers over her shoulder, just a light touch, and Hawke finally turns to him, and even in the darkness he can see the curves of her face.
“Tell me what you need,” he says and she presses her face against his chest. And she doesn't cry or shake, but he holds her there all the same, and it is the closest they have been in so long.
“I need you to stay with me,” she whispers against his skin, and he thinks that this is something he can do.
*
They cannot stay in one place for long, and so when the morning sun breaks the line of the trees they are already gone, disappearing from the village as quickly as they arrived. Sleep has made Hawke's eyes a little brighter, he thinks, and that is good.
They hear nothing for days as they travel, but the news of the Antivan Circle keeps at least Anders from despairing. But Hawke is still quiet, and not for the first time Anders wonders how she was able to hold everything together for those three years.
He misses her smiles and her laughter. But those things have been showing themselves less and less over the years, and now there are little more than bitter-tinged smiles that occasionally grace her lips.
They come across the first Templars that they have seen in weeks a few days later, leading a group of bound mages - and he knows some of the mages, they are from Kirkwall, and one of them he had once helped to escape the city -
Justice wakes.
And all the anger and hate bubbles up within him, but he tries to hold it back even as blue light threatens to spill out of his skin. He cannot-
But Hawke moves before he can.
He does not know what possess her to do so - there are six Templars and only the two of them, and she has stepped out into the path before them.
“Where are you taking these mages?” she asks - commands - and the Templars stop. Behind them, the mages cower, caught and bound, unable to cast.
“You,” one of the Templars says. “You are the Champion.”
“Yes,” says Hawke, and she smiles and it is terrible. “You will release these mages.”
The Templars laughs, but it is a nervous laugh. “Why would we do that?” she asks, and she sounds so very young - but she is a Templar, and every Templar must burn or no mage will be safe.
Justice crawls beneath Anders' skin, straining to be released.
“That's the Champion,” one of the other Templars says, his words a frantic hiss. “She killed the Knight-Commander.”
“Release them,” says Hawke. She has not reached for her staff yet - why has she not reached for her staff? - and another of the Templars laughs and Anders watches as they draw their swords and move -
He breaks from the cover of the trees - where he has waited, trying to calm Justice, trying to figure out some course of action - and slams his own staff into the ground, the crescent blades digging into the dirt, and ice rushes out to meet them, encasing their legs and crawling up their bodies until they are still statues.
“You will not touch her.”
Justice is bleeding out, barely contained, and he cannot hold him in -
And then he feels the air go still around him, an almost weightless feeling, and he knows this magic, knows that it is Hawke's, and the air goes thick around him, a dragging weight on his limbs.
It is only the edges of the spell that catch him, and his body feels heavy but does not fall. But the Templars are caught fast within it, drawn upward and then violently down, the ice on the first two cracking as they are thrown to the ground hard enough to stun, to break bones. From the corner of his eye, Anders sees Hawke draw her hands together and watches the Templars skitter across the ground as her magic tosses them about.
And then the young Templar releases a blast of holy energy that pulls all the magic from the air. Anders is far enough away that he only feels the residual effects of it, but Hawke is hit full and she is brought to her knees, completely drained of magic.
He moves faster than any of them expect, is by the Templar's side before she can push herself up from the ground, and he slams his foot down on her back, bringing his staff down until the largest of the crescent blades curves around her neck, points just barely touching the ground.
“If any of you move, I will kill her,” he says, and he must have gotten Justice in check or the Templar would already be dead -
“I know who you are,” the Templar says, her face pressed down into the dirt. “Murderer.”
He allows his staff to fall just slightly and the Templar goes still.
But holding one Templar's life in his hands is not enough to keep the others from acting, and there is movement from behind him - a Templar with a raised sword, no time think - and Anders turns, fire blossoming from his fingertips just as he applies all his weight to his staff.
He sees Hawke move from the corner of his eye - she cannot use magic now, but she holds her bladed staff like a sword, but she is no warrior and there is a Templar closing in on her-
Pain lances through his shoulder, but he barely feels it because Justice has taken over completely.
*
“Anders, wake up. Please, please wake up.”
He smells blood - tastes blood - and he is in pain. He opens his eyes and sees Hawke there, beside him, feels the warm glow of healing magic as her fingers move over his shoulder and his chest. He opens his mouth to speak and coughs, blood welling up through his throat and slicking his lips.
“Let me help.”
Hawke tenses, looks at someone who he cannot see, but then nods. More healing magic washes over him, knitting things back together, taking the edge off the pain.
“Who-” he manages to say, but nothing more, looking at this other healer through pain-blurred eyes. It is that woman - yes, he helped her once, the mage underground, years ago - who he had helped move out of the city. Miria - Miriam.
He looks back to Hawke, sees the fatigue on her face, the lines around her eyes as she concentrates. Her magic has come back - how long was he out? He opens his mouth again to speak, swallowing blood.
“Hush, Anders,” she says, voice harsh, ragged. “The mages are fine. The Templars are dead. Just rest.”
He wants to nod, but cannot even do that. Instead, he closes his eyes and allows them to heal him.
*
They pile the Templars bodies and burn them, and two of the mages bury the armor while Hawke and the other healer - Miriam, she has said her name was - move Anders' unconscious form off the road.
There are four mages - the healer, who looks to be only a few years younger than Hawke, a boy and a girl who look to be no more than sixteen, and a small boy who cannot possibly be older than six.
“That's the mage who blew up the Chantry,” Hawke hears the older boy say to the girl, and her heart squeezes painfully - is that all Anders will ever be known for? - but as much as she wants to jump to his defense she is far better served by concentrating on healing him.
He is so hurt, so pale, stained with blood that has dried and blackened against his skin, and just looking at him makes her heart hurt so much that she is certain it will crack in two.
What would she do if she lost him?
She has not thought about it, not really, avoided all thoughts of her decision to spare him - to stay with him - since they had fled the Gallows, afraid that if she thought about it she would only realize that she had done the wrong thing.
But seeing him now, closer to death than she has ever wished to see him, all she can think is that it would have killed her to kill him.
She cradles his hand in hers, runs her thumb over his skin, little bits of dried blood flaking away as she does so.
It's going to be impossible to get all the blood out of his clothes, she thinks, and it is the silliest, most unimportant little thought, and it makes her laugh, a half-mad, terrified little sob of laughter that catches in her chest and her throat.
“He will be all right,” the mage woman says - Miriam, she makes herself remember, because she has not been able to focus much on the others ever since she saw the Templar bring his sword down upon Anders' shoulder - and Hawke looks up at her.
Part of her wants to say that he hasn't been all right in years, but she doesn't. It would do no good.
Instead, she just tightens her grip on his still hand. “I know,” she says, even though she doesn't know. She's a healer, but never as good as him. Never good enough, not to save Carver from the taint, not save her mother, not to save anyone.
“Miriam, we should go,” says the girl, stepping close to them but still keeping herself as far from Anders and Hawke as she can. There is a wariness in her stance, and this in and of itself sets Hawke even more on edge.
“We will stay until these two are fit to travel,” Miriam says, a tight note of finality in her voice. The girl opens her mouth to speak, closes it, and looks over to the boy.
“That man blew up the Chantry, Miriam,” he says. “That woman killed Knight-Commander Meredith. They've endangered the lives of every mage in Thedas!”
“And yet that man is the reason why I and my son are even alive,” she says, and Hawke notices, perhaps for the first time, that the younger of the boys looks very much like the woman - the same eyes, a nose that, once matured, would look similar to hers.
“You...know Anders?”
Miriam nods, looking down at him and then back up at Hawke. “He was part of the mage underground when I...needed to escape the Gallows.”
“You said...your son?” She looks to the boy again, who is hanging back, the words of the others keeping him from wanting to be too close to them.
The healer nods again, but does not elaborate.
“We will stay with you until your Anders is no longer in danger, and then we must part ways,” she says. “It is the least that we can do for you.”
*
It takes awhile, but eventually Anders is up and well enough to walk. The other mages leave soon after he wakes, and Miriam - Miriam, he remembers her, a pregnant mage does not last long in Gallows, especially when the father is a Templar - takes a long moment to speak with Hawke before looking to him and smiling.
“Thank you,” she says, and they are gone.
They cannot travel fast - they stop often, him to rest, her to pour as much healing magic into him as she can. It is unnecessary, he is strong enough to heal himself, but she brushes his hands away.
“Let me do this, Anders,” she tells him, and even though there are dark circles under her eyes and she looks wearier and wearier every day there is such determination in her voice that he can't argue.
So he let her heal him and leans on her shoulder when he needs to. They head into the heavily wooded hills, and for a long time they see no one else.
They camp by a stream one night, and Anders finally has the chance to try to wash the blood out of his clothing. The feathers that adorn his coat are matted and ruined - there's little reason to try to salvage them, but he tries even so, leaving trails of red in the water.
Hawke is quiet again, ever since he was injured, ever since Justice had shown up again. And Anders wants to talk to her, but now Justice is a manic whisper in his mind again.
The river water is cold and his fingers have long since begun to numb, but he stubbornly tries to rinse the last of blood out of the fabric. His concentration is so focused on the stained, tattered coat that he does not notice Hawke until she speaks.
“You're fingers are going to freeze off if you keep up with that,” she says, and he looks up to find her perched on one of the large rocks that lines the riverbank, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them as she gazes at him and his coat.
“Mmm, they're still a little ways from falling off,” he says, raising one hand and flexing his fingers to prove that they still function. He's rewarded with a tiny smile, half hidden by the shadows that the evening light casts on her face.
“Anders,” she finally says as he pulls his coat from the river, water dripping down his arms and soaking his rolled up shirtsleeves.
“Mmm?”
“It can't happen again.”
He freezes, for a moment not at all sure of what she is referencing. What can't happen again? There are so many things that she could mean, and so many of them are things he does not want to hear.
“You need to be more careful,” she continues, still curled up on the rock, not even looking at him. “I'm not all that good at healing, you know. Not as good as you. If you get hurt like that again...I might not be able to fix it.”
He looks up at her, trying to catch her gaze. “Hawke,” he says, softly, quietly, uncertain of how to ask this, but it's something that he's been thinking about far too much, “why did you try to confront those Templars on your own?”
Her eyes dart to him, then she looks down and away, hiding behind her arms and her hair. “It's nothing,” she says, and he doesn't believe her, not at all.
It cannot possibly be nothing. He might forget things, or miss things, and sometimes he's too caught up in his own revolution to pay attention to things outside himself - distractions that try to catch at his mind, things incompatible with Justice - but he can tell that something is wrong. And it's not the same thing that has been wrong between them for so long, since he asked for her help and lied to her, trying to protect her even while he was using her for his own ends.
It's like something has broken inside her since they left Kirkwall, and he doesn't know how to fix it.
Once upon a time, he would have felt Justice's dislike for the woman well up within him at that thought, but not now. He feels the spirit's worry mix with his own. Ever since she stepped between the Knight-Commander and the mages of the Gallows, Justice has...become more accepting of her.
Strange, he thinks, and so terribly wrong how the thing that may have damaged her irreparably is what brings Justice's approval.
“Please, talk to me,” he says, the words a desperate plea, repeated far too often and being met mostly with silences and blank gazes. “Tell me what I can do.”
She gives a little choked laugh. “You can't do anything.” She pulls her knees closer to her chest, hides her face against them until he can barely see it at all.
He pulls his sodden coat from the river and drapes it over the rocks by his side, water rolling down grey stone, leaving dark trails in their wake. His fingers are still cold, numb, but he turns to Hawke and reaches out, brushing her hair back until he can see her eyes. “Let me try,” he says, and she tips her head up, eyes fluttering closed as he presses a kiss against her forehead. “Let me help.”
“You can't.”
“I can try,” he insists, setting his forehead to hers, cool fingers cupping her face. Her arms drop to her sides and her feet slide down the rock until she is no longer curled in upon herself.
“Can you put the whole world back together?” she asks him, breath hot upon his skin.
“It was never whole to begin with.”
She shudders and he feels it. “I don't want to be part of your cause anymore,” she says, and the words bring little stabs of anger from the part of him that is Justice. But he holds those thoughts back as best he can.
“Hawke-”
She pulls away from him and his hands drop to her shoulders. The light is dim around them, but he can still see the weariness in her eyes, the shadows under them. “I don't want to be part of this fight,” she says. “But you forced the choice on me, so I will live with it. I'll fight every Templar that tries to harm a mage, and I'll stand by you. But don't ask me to be happy. I'll give everything to this, just...don't.”
He turns his head to the side, eyes closed. There is so much she isn't say, so many thing implied, all the little details that scream out about how far from all right she has become. He misses her smiles and her jokes, her laughter, her joy. And he thinks, this is his doing, he's the one driving away all of her happiness and goodness, he has done this, and isn't there injustice in slowly destroying someone like her?
“You can go back,” he says softly, and she stills. When he looks back at her, her eyes are wide.
“What?”
“You can go back,” he repeats. “You made plans, with Isabela and Varric, in case anything went wrong.” He gives a small, humorless laugh at the look on her face.
“You heard that?” she says, voice very small, and she looks away from him. Even that small movement is enough to cause his heart to clench painfully; she has never been the sort to do this, to pull herself away from another person like this. She is brash and outspoken and she does not hide.
He doesn't know what to do, except to let her go.
“You weren't supposed to hear that,” she says, brushing her hair behind her ear, so very deliberately not looking at him. It doesn't matter that his hands are still on her shoulders or that they are so very close together - the inches between them could be miles for all she has closed herself off. “We made them...just in case.”
“But you could go,” he says, and he doesn't want to say any of this, doesn't want to let her walk away from him. But what he wants, far more than that, is for her to smile - to truly smile - again.
“I said I would stay with you.”
“I -” would let you go to see you smile, “-will not hold you to that.”
He begins to withdraw his hands, but she catches at them, holds them fast.
“Anders,” she says, “I'm not staying with you because of some promise I made to you. I'm staying because...because I want to stay with you. And as long as I'm alive, I can't escape this war that...that we have brought upon the world. So I'm going to stay with you because that is what I want to do. Besides,” and here she turns and looks at him, with the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips, one that doesn't reach her eyes but tries to, “you've done a million things worse than tell me I can leave, and I haven't left you yet. You'll have to try a little harder if you want me gone.”
Her fingers are warm around his, holding him fast. “I don't want you gone. I...want you to be happy again.”
Another broken smile. “That won't happen until this war is over,” she says, and she clings to his cold hands like a lifeline.
But the war will not be over for along time, not for years and years. He knows this, and so he thinks that he will try to be for her what she was for him in Kirkwall. He will be her support for as long as she needs. And he hopes that will be enough.