At first, it's almost not there.
It's nothing. Just a scratchy feeling in the back of his mind, a vague nagging sensation, like when you think there's something you should be doing but you can't quite remember what.
It's easy to ignore it, pretend it's not happening.
Maybe it isn't.
This might be something else altogether. It could be nothing. He could even be imagining it.
Anders decides not to say anything. There's no point worrying Hawke, not yet.
Not until he's sure it's real.
But they've lived together for more than twenty years now, and Lucas Hawke knows when something is wrong. He can't help noticing that Anders seems distant, distracted. There's that deep line that appears down the centre of his forehead when he's troubled, and the blank, glassy-eyed expression that comes over the face at times, as if he's lost in thought, or listening.
He finally brings the subject up one night as they lay together in front of the fire. He strokes the healer's hair, winds it round his fingers, looking for strands of silver among the faded gold.
"It's started, hasn't it?" he says.
Hawke's beard is patched with grey now too, tawny and speckled, like the bird of prey his family once took their name from.
Anders still thinks he's the most beautiful man he's ever seen.
He doesn't say anything, but Hawke persists.
"The calling. Your calling's started."
Hawke's heart is beating too fast. He's afraid that by saying the words out loud, he's giving them a reality they didn't have before, an inevitability. That by speaking them, he's somehow making them true.
There's a moment of silence, of dreadful stillness, when neither of them dares to breathe.
"I'm sorry, love. " Anders voice is uneven, as he reaches out to touch Hawke's face with fingertips that tremble almost imperceptibly. "I didn't know how to tell you."
They'd known that their time together would be limited, but they didn't talk about it, and because they never talked about it, it never felt real.
"We knew this was coming…" Anders says softly, his breath ragged, his lips against his lovers neck.
"Yes, but not yet…"
It had always felt like there was more time.
~0~
For a while, they do their best to carry on as normal.
The two of them have managed to build a life together against the odds, out here in the middle of nowhere, at the arse-end of the Marches.
Anders brews potions for the people in the nearby village, and the musky, green scent of boiled Elfroot still clings to his clothes and hair, the way it did back in Kirkwall. He sets their bones and delivers their babies, falling back on his healing magic surreptitiously, when all else fails.
Hawke hires himself out to whoever has need of his considerable muscle, building walls and bringing in harvests. They chop firewood, and plant vegetables and healing herbs in their muddy little garden, and at night they fall asleep in each others arms. It's a quiet life, but it's not a bad one, and neither of them are willing to admit the fact that it's over.
During the day, they can carry on almost as if nothing is happening, but at night the fear creeps in, and they hold each other close in the light of the dying fire, and whisper to each other.
"I just… I won't go, simple as that," Anders says.
"If it was that simple, no one would go, love."
"Well, it might not be the same for everyone. It might be different for me."
"It might be, " Hawke agrees. "You've always been a law unto yourself."
"I never did what the Templars wanted. Don't see why I should give in to a bunch of filthy Darkspawn…"
It's all just words, just sound to fill the empty spaces, and they both know it but they keep it up anyway, because if they stopped, the silence would be too much to bear.
Another time, Hawke announces "I'm coming with you," and Anders shakes his head.
"Absolutely not."
"You can't stop me," Hawke insists, but the other man's eyes are hard and unyielding.
"Are you sure about that?" he snaps angrily. "Do you really want to test that little theory?"
Hawke flinches. When he speaks again, his voice is soft and hesitant.
" We face everything together, Anders. It's what we do."
"Not this. I don't want you there, love. I don't want you to see…"
But he can't bring himself to say it out loud.
I don't want you to see me end up a shambling, barely human thing like Larius.
I don't want you to see me scared.
I don't want you there when I meet a futile, sickening death at the hands of Maker knows what vile creature."
I just don't want you there," he says.
~0~
"Fucking Grey Wardens, fucking taint…filthy fucking Darkspawn… "
Hawke curses out loud to himself as he climbs to the top of the hill, slashing furiously at the undergrowth that lines the narrow dirt track with his staff. Crows rise, flapping, from the bare branches of the trees, and take flight.
"You're not having him, you bastards, he's not yours," he mutters.
When he reaches the summit he stands for a minute, looking back down towards the home he shares with his love, the curl of grey smoke from the chimney and the warm flicker of light at the windows. He pictures the mage curled on the bench beside the fireplace, a book balanced against his long legs, the way his blond hair falls over his face when he's reading.
The image is accompanied by a surge of pain so fierce it doubles him over.
He's mine…
Oh Maker, my Anders…
Alone and away from the house, he finally gives in to the rage that's been gathering in him ever since he realised what was happening. Flame forms around his hands, and he hurls it violently at a nearby oak. The tree explodes in a blaze of wild energy, sending sparks shooting up into the air, and setting light to the grass around it.
It's not enough.
He raises his staff, channels lightning to rip the sky apart. The air crackles and fizzes around him, making the hairs on his arms stand on end, and thick dark clouds envelop the mountaintop in an abnormal, greenish twilight. He casts a blizzard, and feels the ice form a bitter armour on his skin, as jagged hailstones plunge like spears into the earth.
Hawke stands in the middle of the storm, his face and hair soaked and his skin raw, and screams into the howling wind.
~0~
Some days are worse than others.
On the bad days, Anders pulls his hair and clutches at his head. He curses things Hawke can't see, and talks nonsense to himself in an attempt to drown out the voices.
The sounds have started to take on the patterns of speech now. He imagines that if he concentrates hard enough, he'll be able to make out words, and he can't help trying, even though he knows they won't say anything he wants to hear.
Hawke feels helpless, watching him.
He's never been religious - he's seen too many cruelties committed in the Maker's name for that - but in bed at night, while his lover whimpers and struggles in the brutal embrace of his nightmares, he prays silently.
Don't make him do this. He's been through so much, and it's not fair - he's so scared. He tries to hide it from me, but I know how scared he is. He hates the deep roads, the darkness... the weight of all that cold stone around him...
He prays Maker, I'd do anything to spare him that, let me help him, please.
~0~
As winter deepens, and the call of the Darkspawn in his tainted blood grows stronger, it takes everything Anders has to resist.
He understands them now - not the words, because they're not really words at all, but he feels what lies behind them, and the clammy, unwholesome touch of it against his thoughts disgusts him. He recoils in panic.
I can't. Anything's better than this. I won't do it…
He feels himself beginning to unravel.
You can't run away from this, he tells himself.
But even now, there's a stubborn part of him that refuses to believe it.
He begins to crave the outdoors, the feel of the wind in his hair or the rain on his face, the dizzying arc of the stars above his head. As the days grow colder, he takes to sitting on the stone bench in the little garden for hours at a time, and when the first snow falls the flakes settle on his shoulders like feathers, pure and perfectly white.
Hawke wraps a blanket around him, and brings him steaming mugs of tea, and they sit and watch the sky together.
"Do you remember when we were first on the run, all those nights we lay beneath the stars?" he asks, and Anders laughs softly, remembering the mud and the damp grass and the desperate way they'd clung together, seeking reassurance in each others bodies.
He remembers Hawke stretched out naked beneath him, reaching for him, his skin bleached the colour of bone by the full moon.
"You were so lovely," he says softly. "You're still lovely now."
He turns his head to kiss his lover, his lips chapped and coarsened by the cold, but still so gentle and yielding. Hawke's mouth tastes of sweet tea, and the traces of a thousand past kisses.
"I'd give anything to be able to go back," he says.
~0~
The nights grow longer, until they're almost endless.
Anders' mind feels like a battleground. The voices taunt him, and sometimes, for a while, he loses himself in them completely. Eventually, he always manages to claw his way back, guided by Hawke's voice and the soothing touch of his hands.
When his thoughts are lucid, they talk about the past and about their old friends, the makeshift little family they shared in Kirkwall.
Anders tells Hawke stories from the time before they met. He talks about the circle tower, his secret trysts with Karl behind the dusty bookshelves in the library, and his failed escape attempts.
"The last time they caught me, they locked me up for a year," he says. "You can't imagine… a whole year of nothing but darkness and your own dismal thoughts. I thought I was going crazy. They never spoke to me when they brought me food or water - I tried everything to get them to talk to me. I used to scream myself hoarse, sometimes, just to reassure myself I still existed..."
He tells him about Amaranthine, and Ser Pounce-a-lot, and how he met Justice and fought with him at the side of the Warden Commander. Hawke has heard most of the stories before, but he drinks them in now, willing himself to remember every word, every detail of the life Anders is getting ready to leave behind.
"I wonder where he is now, Kieran Amell? No one's seen him for years. I wonder if he's... you know."
Anders doesn't finish his sentence, but Hawke knows what he means.
I wonder if he's gone.
All of them, the Grey Wardens he fought with - Oghren and Sigrun, Nathaniel Howe.
This is happening, or has already happened, or is going to happen soon, to all of them.
The thought doesn't bring him any comfort.
It's like watching stars flicker out, one by one.
All that courage, all that sacrifice, and this is what it comes to, in the end, he thinks.
A squalid, pointless death, alone and afraid in the dark.
But he's Anders the escape artist, the rebel, the runaway. He's never been one for giving up, for going along with things just because he was supposed to.
He'll be damned if he's going to change now.
~0~
Anders holds a knife, delicately, between his slender fingers.
It's a small knife, with a long thin blade - one he uses for various things when he's healing. He plays with it, turning it so that it catches the smoulder and spark of the firelight. The look in his honey-coloured eyes reminds Lucas of Kirkwall, and for a moment, he's back there, standing in the wreckage of a burning city on the brink of war, while Anders sits, hunched like a bird in his black feathers, rocking slightly backwards and forwards as he waits for Hawke to decide his fate.
He remembers the feel of the knife, cold and cruel, in his hands.
He rests his head against the other man's shoulder and closes his eyes, losing himself in the familiar scent of Elfroot and leather.
Outside, the wind howls and crashes against the walls like waves. The shutters creak and Hawke could almost imagine they were on a ship. Going somewhere. Sunny Antiva, maybe - Anders had always wanted to go there.
"Could you have done it?" the healer asks, and Hawke doesn't need to ask him what he means.
He shakes his head.
So long ago now, twenty years, a lifetime.
It feels like yesterday.
"They were all watching me," Hawke remembers. "They were waiting for me to do it. Part of me even thought it would be the right thing to do, but no… I couldn't. Not to you."
Hawke feels the prickle and burn, the empty threat of tears at the back of his eyes, even now, thinking about it.
He never cries. He didn't cry when Beth died, because he was too shocked, and because he had to be strong. He didn't even cry when his mother died. It was his fault. He didn't deserve the luxury of tears.
He never cries, but he wishes he could.
After a while, he asks, "Did you want me to?"
"I don't know, I wanted to be a martyr, but that's not really the same thing, is it?"
Anders sighs. He stares at the healing blade, at the warmth of it, red and gold in the glow from the hearth.
"No, I didn't want to die. I didn't want to leave you." His eyes meet Hawke's. "I just didn't think I had a choice. And if it had to happen, I wanted it to be you rather than someone who didn't know me, someone who didn't care. I wanted it to be... important."
He wraps an arm around Hawke's shoulder, pulls him closer. Close enough to feel the other man's breath against his throat, the tickle of hair against his unshaven cheek.
"Do you understand?" he asks gently.
"Yes."
"If you'd known it was what I really wanted, could you have done it?"
Hawke realises, shocked, that it's not just a hypothetical question. Anders is asking something of him.
Anders is asking Could you do that for me, what I did for Karl?
" I... I don't know, " he says." I hope I could."
Anders takes his hand and places the knife in it. He presses Hawke's numb fingers closed around the hilt, and then he brings them to his lips and kisses them, and for the first time in his life Hawke understands what it feels like, when all hope is lost.
"I'm not a coward, Lucas," he says. "I'm just tired. I can't go on fighting it, and I can't give in either."
"I know, love."
"I don't want to die underground."
"I know."
Anders tries his best to sound light hearted."Remember that thing Aveline said once, about me going out in a blaze of glory? I suppose it's too late for that now?"
Their lips meet, urgent and heartbroken, and the knife falls to the floor with a hollow clatter as Hawke's hands lose themselves in the fabric of his lovers shirt, the texture of his hair, his skin.
Later, he goes back for it. He attaches it to his belt, where he can feel the weight of it every time he moves.
~0~
Somehow, winter wears itself out.
Birds come to nest on the chimney, and the scruffy little garden fills with wildflowers and the raw, earthy scent of new things and new lives. Anders looks shattered, broken. There's something almost insubstantial about him. His hands shake, and there are dark shadows, like bruises, beneath his eyes. He barely sleeps anymore, and when he does he cries out in his dreams for Hawke to help him.
He wakes up screaming.
Hawke holds him. He strokes the damp hair back off his face, and kisses his stubble, and rocks him against his chest, but he no longer tells him it will be all right. They're beyond that now.
As he drifts into a fitful sleep, Hawke's thoughts fills with images of Anders - his Anders, and all the Anders from the stories he's memorised.
Anders in the circle, so brave and beautiful - all fancy robes and the glint of a golden earring, wearing his reputation like a mask to hide the desperate hunger inside. Risking everything for freedom and the feel of the rain against his upturned face.
The only man he's ever loved.
His life.
Exhausted, more then half asleep, he prays Maker, give me courage.
Let me help him.
~0~
When he wakes again, it's daylight. Yellow sunlight slants in beneath the shutters, illuminating the empty space beside him in the bed.
"Anders…"
Fearful, he grabs for his jacket and belt, and runs to the door.
The mage is sitting in the garden, bathed in the afternoon light, his face tilted to the sky.
"I wanted to feel the sunlight," he says. "It's the first day the sun has had any real warmth to it. It's beautiful."
"I thought you'd gone..." Hawke tries to keep the panic from his voice.
"Soon, Lucas." Anders expression is calm, his voice steady. "Today. I'm going today. "
"No, not yet. You can't…"
"It's not going to get any easier, love."
For a moment, Hawke can't breathe. He feels the air filling his lungs, but there's not enough oxygen in it. The world tilts dangerously, darkens around the edges, and then Anders reaches for him, steadies him, the way he's always steadied him.
He looks into his lover's eyes, and for the first time in months, there's no fear there. There's love, and warmth, and amber sunshine glinting with gold, and there's courage, and something that almost looks like peace. And finally, Hawke feels it too.
Acceptance.
He sits down beside the mage, turning to face him, close enough that their bodies are touching.
Shoulders touching, thighs, knees.
His hands, oh maker, his hands gripping my arms so gently.
Remember this, the feel of him…
"We've been happy, haven't we?"
Anders smiles, and somehow, Hawke finds the strength to smile back.
"I wouldn't have missed a single moment," he says.
As they hold each other, hearts beating against each other and breath soft as a whisper against each other's lips, Anders says "Thank you Hawke, for everything."
"I love you," Lucas whispers, as the blade slides in, almost effortlessly, between the ribs. Inwards and upwards, towards the heart.
...too easy, he thinks. It shouldn't be this easy, it shouldn't be... but he's glad it is.
Anders makes a soft little sound, like a sigh. He slumps forward, his head against Hawke's chest.
His lips part silently, and a trickle of blood darkens them.
Hawke kisses it gently away.
"Shhh, it's alright love, I've got you…" he says.
And then he holds him, until all the light is gone.