A/N: This song plays as the outro after the endgame. I just finished my fourth playthrough and it had been stuck in my head. This is what came to me as I listened to it for the umpteenth time.

As always I do not own Dragon Age or any of it's affiliated paraphernalia. I just like to play around in Thedas whenever I can. Enjoy!

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I'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me
I'm not calling you a thief, just don't steal from me
I'm not calling you a ghost, just stop haunting me
And I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me
XXX
There's a ghost in my lungs and it sighs in my sleep
Wraps itself around my tongue as it softly speaks
Then it walks, then it walks with my legs
To fall, to fall, to fall at your feet
XXX
There but for the grace of God go I
And when you kiss me, I am happy enough to die

XXX

"I'm not Calling You a Liar"- Florence and the Machine

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"Stop."

And I do. That voice pins my feet to the ground as surely as the arrow I know is aimed at my back would. My heart hammers against the cage of my ribs. It's been so long. So long since I've heard it. Save for in my dreams.

"Turn around Anders. I won't be forced to shoot you in the back."

And I do. I brush at the front of my dusty cloak. Run a hand trough the tangle of my hair. I wonder what she'll think of the grey that peppers my temples. Or the scar that puckers the flesh from my ear across my cheek to wrap around my throat. "I'd hoped it would be you. It should be."

The look on her face is not what I'd expected. Determined, yes, grim even. But not this anguish. It darkens the dove grey of her eyes til it matches the smoke that billows up from the remains of the Chantry prison just beyond the treeline behind her. One more act of destruction to assure my place in the void.

"I can't let you go." She says setting her stance. Pulling taut her bowstring. "Not this time."

"I know." I take a breath. Drag it deep into my lungs. Feel the tug of old wounds as my ribcage expands. I'm tired. And the music is getting louder. The pull of the deep roads will be too much to resist soon.

"Why couldn't you have just faded away? Let someone else continue this madness?" A single silvered tear traces it's way to her jaw taking soot with it and teasing me with a glimpse of porcelain skin. I can still remember the way it felt beneath my fingers. The need to pull her into my arms and ease her pain is visceral. I almost take that step but check myself. We are too far gone for that now.

"They want you for the brand. More than anyone has ever wanted anything."

"I wouldn't say that love." I smile and find that I mean it.

The clouds above shift allowing the sun to slice through the canopy of leaves above us. It glints off the point of her arrow, paints gold in her cinnamon colored hair and is swallowed by the inky blackness of her armor even as it sets the eye picked out in silver upon her chest ablaze.

"Did you hear me Anders? We are to bring you in alive. So they may brand you and parade you about Thedas as an example of the Orders' power." Frustration sets her jaw. Stiffens her spine. "And there's nothing I can do about it. They—" Her voice breaks. A second tear joins the first winding it's own way through the ash that covers her face. "They have my Beth."

"Of course they do." I laugh and it scrapes my throat raw. "And they say we are the evil ones."

Bastards. They found a soft spot and dug in deep. It shouldn't surprise me that they'd turn on one of their own. Not when it could get them a prize such as me.

I wish, as I have so many times before, that things could have been different. Or maybe I could have been different but I made my choices. Each one taking me a step further away from her. Maker what a mess.

I pull the staff from my back and lay in on the ground at my feet. "So what now love?"

She shifts foot to foot. A nervous habit she's had for as long as I've known her. "We are to bring you in alive. But, dead is…..acceptable." She looks pointedly down at the staff. "If you fight."

My stomach clenches. She is offering me the only way out that she can. But can I take it?

"Make it fire." She whispers.

I go cold from head to toe. "Hawke I—"

The baying of mabari cuts through the air.

"They're close."

The shouts grow louder. The clank of armor joins the call of the dogs.

"Anders. Please."

The crash of steel striking thick foliage bursts through from all sides.

"Do it now!"

I scoop my staff up bringing it out before me not unlike I did the day we met in my clinic in Darktown. It feels like a thousand years have passed since that day.

Closer. Louder. And I can see them.

I call fire into my empty hand staring into her eyes as the old fear fills them. Her breath becomes erratic causing the vein in her neck to throb. She flexes the fingers that hold her bow whiteknuckled tight.

She begins to moan low in her throat. Tries in vain to suppress the shudder that racks her body.

"I love you. I always have." I pull my arm back and close my eyes. My hand cools instantly as the fire leaves it. I hear the shouts of the Seekers as they barrel through the trees and above them the soft twang of her bowstring as it sends mercy to my undeserving heart.