Hawke hadn't spoken to him since Kirkwall. She had spared whispered farewells when their companions chose to splinter and go separate ways. It would be harder to track them that way, and there was no doubt there would be people on their heels soon enough. Saying goodbye to her sister was hardest, but she had a home with the wardens now and Anders knew that in this tumult they might be the safest haven for her.
The others had treated Anders as if he didn't exist. He couldn't blame them. He was still amazed that nobody had put a knife to his throat or nonchalantly slid one into his back at the first opportunity.
And now he and Hawke were on the run. No person would protect them, probably not even the wardens. He'd warned her time and time again that a life with him would mean a life of being hated and hunted, perhaps forever. Yet she had made the decision to stay, even with the threat of armies rising up with the sole intent of hunting him down and killing him.
After three days of silence Anders was sure she was punishing him. A knife in his back would have been a blessed relief.
The two had taken shelter in an abandoned farmhouse during a miserable rainstorm. They had rushed in completely drenched and freezing and filthy. After some scrounging Hawke found some horse blankets that weren't completely rotten, and a little bit of Anders' magic helped turn his gathered planks of damp wood into a serviceable fire. The two of them huddled over the flame and tried to purge the cold from their skin and pretend their clothing was drying out.
"How does Justice feel now?" Her words had come out of nowhere, so unexpected and jarring that it took several moments for him to realize she had said anything, and then several more to comprehend it.
She didn't understand, not that he could blame her for that either. How can anyone who had never experienced it understand what it was like to have your soul tangled up with a spirit? Justice wasn't a voice in his mind or even a separate entity anymore. They were like two types of metal mixed together to form a single tool. You could perhaps pick out properties and hints of each, but they weren't two beings anymore.
Anders closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of the fire against his chilled skin. "At peace for now. It may not last, but Justice is sated." His explanations didn't help clear things very well. Justice was a side of his own emotions and thoughts now. They had been so different and so jarring that he knew at first that they could not truly have started as a part of himself, but now after so many years the two were growing more indistinct.
His thoughts had corrupted Justice into Vengeance, but that went both ways. Justice had corrupted the joking and carefree mage into someone who could no longer pass by any injustice without feeling the urge to right it or avenge it somehow. It was like the templars (as much as he hated drawing the analogy) and their addiction to Lyrium. Justice was an aching hunger in him now, greater than his desire for food or drink or anything else.
Hawke prodded at the fire with a stick ineffectually. "How do you feel?"
"I haven't given it much thought," He rubbed his calloused hands together and tried to ignore the growling in his stomach. Their food supply was running low and the land had very little to offer at this time of the year. "If you're hoping to hear that I regret what I did, then you're going to be disappointed."
He expected to get another three days of quiet for that, but he had lied enough. Best she know the truth.
Her silence lasted another minute. "You regret that I didn't kill you."
Anders laughed darkly. He remembered that moment after the chantry had exploded. Justice was screaming exultations and cries of victory loud enough to rival the echo of the explosion in his head. Yet the part of him that was him, the shreds of the real untouched Anders that clung on to the creature he was now... that part was tired. He barely had paid attention to the arguments going on as he sat down on a nearby crate and waited. Merideth would behead him, Orsinio would incinerate him into ash, someone would rise up to strike him for what he did and he would not resist. He was tired and he wanted to rest.
Instead Hawke had grabbed his arm and wrenched him to his feet, shoving and battering him whenever he slowed or strayed. She refused to meet his eyes and ordered him about with the curtness reserved for the Qunari and their Serebas mages. All he needed was a leash and the image would have been perfect.
And now instead of getting his rest he was sitting in a barn that reeked of rotten hay and old manure, his robes soaked to the bone, his toes numb from the dampness and cold, and his stomach twisting itself into knots from hunger.
"I deserved it, Hawke." he answered. "I know it looks like I wished all those people in the Chantry dead, but I know what I did as murder and I expected to die a murderer's death." He finally opened his eyes to gaze into the fire, watching as Hawke continued to poke and stab at it with her stick. "It doesn't change the fact that it was the only way. Talk all you want, but we know that Merideth would not have compromised, and the Grand Cleric would never have spoken out for either side, and it would have kept on and on..."
She lifted a hand and he stopped. "And now they're both dead." She drew her legs up to her chest and hugged them, trying to keep the cold at bay as best as she could. "I didn't ask what you deserve, I ask what you regret. You wanted me to kill you."
A decade ago and he would have avoided answering that by saying something silly. He would have been charmingly evasive until the original point had been completely forgotten. He used to be good at that. He also used to be able to walk past a templar without the urge to bring his burning wrath down on them and rend them to bloody shreds with his bare hands and teeth.
"All the little daydreams and planning that went on in my head about what to do and how to do it, all of them ended with my death. Dying was part of the plan." He shrugged helplessly. "Regret isn't a part of it. It's a simple matter of shock. The plan was that I blow up the chantry, someone executes me for it, and that would be that. I'd have been just as shocked if the explosive hadn't gone off, or if Orsinio and Merideth and everyone else ignored it and kept with their squabbling."
Hawke discarded her stick and pressed her palms over her eyes wearily. "Well, none of us were expecting the chantry to explode, so I suppose all of us got a shock." Her voice grew softer. "Maybe I should have expected it. I look back and all the signs were there."
"And I told you not to worry, I deliberately kept you out of my plans..." Anders sighed. "And you didn't want to think I was capable."
The storm outside rattled at the decrepit building hard enough that the rafters creaked in protest. The barn had a season or two of life left in it, and then a storm like this would come along and collapse it. Anders tried to imagine what the barn was like when it was in use. Did it belong to a single farmer or someone with a family? Had the blight touched the Free Marches enough that the people here had to abandon everything? Or maybe raiders came and simply killed everyone, gutted all that was useful, and left the husk to rot like so much carrion.
Hawke ran her fingers through her hair. "I hope the others are going to be okay," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
"So why didn't you kill me?" The question came out before Anders could stop it.
She met his eyes and studied him. "I don't know if I can put it into words well enough." Hawke's feet shifted on the blanket the sat on. "I was angry, and part of me felt like death would be too easy. All the stories you told me about your life, you were always running away. Killing you seemed to be another way of letting you escape, and it didn't seem right."
He couldn't help but laugh. "So it wasn't a mercy, it was a punishment."
"It was Justice," Hawke answered.
The word slammed through Anders like a bolt of lightning, so deeply and so jarringly that he found himself suddenly resenting her for even speaking it. As if she had touched some naked part of him without permission or care. The makeshift fire between them bloomed out, responding to mind of the mage that summoned it.
Hawke didn't seem to notice. "You need to see what you've done. You need to hear the names of the deaths you've caused. You need... I don't know. You just shouldn't be allowed to run away this time. For good or for bad you need to see the aftermath."
Anders nodded, trying to focus himself and calm the storm inside of him that Hawke had inadvertently summoned up. It wasn't that he even wanted to die, but he had hoped that his death would free Justice, perhaps even cleanse him of the anger that had twisted him into a half demon.
"They might kill you, you know," he finally said. "As long as you're with me your life is in danger. No house will shelter you, no person will take you in. We may have to live like this until the end of our days, or until our heads end up on a pike somewhere for the masses to spit upon."
"Lovely thought. You keep talking like that and I might be able to forget that I haven't eaten in two days."
He laughed but her words stung him again. It was that brightness that had made him fall in love with her. The woman who cracked jokes in the depths of the Deep Roads and who brought Orsinio and Meredeth to red faced fury with a simple remark about their wedding day. He had hoped that she could bring him back to his old self with her humor, remind him what it was like to be able to laugh at everything. And she had helped him for a time, he had found a calm and a balance around her. Even now her presence was a focus for him, a way to ground his mind and keep the spirit grafted to his soul from overwhelming him.
And now she was barely speaking to him. This talk had been an oasis in the silence, but it could vanish at any moment. He had used her and lied to her and in that one brilliant flash had changed her from a champion to a fugitive.
If he told her she should leave he knew she would take it the wrong way. A sign that he intended to slit his wrists the moment she left the barn, a dismissal of all that they had together when all he wanted was for her to be safe and happy.
When Anders glanced back up he could see her staring curiously at him. He'd gotten lost in his own thoughts yet again and had forgotten that he was having a conversation at all. "I'm sorry, I guess I'm still reeling a little. Or maybe I'm about to pass out from lack of food." He frowned suddenly. "No. I'm just confused."
Hawke arched an eyebrow. How was it she could communicate so much without saying a word?
"Why are you staying with me? I've ruined your life. You could go off on your own and have a better chance at survival. Or are you so determined to give me my own Justice that you're planning to stay with me until you think I've paid my due?" Anders realized there was venom in his tone, a faint echo of the burning monster that was a part of him.
Her eyes narrowed and glared so sharply into Anders that he couldn't look at her anymore.
"I love you, you stubborn selfish ass. Maker knows why!" She sighed exasperatedly, as if having to explain a simple point to a particularly dim child. "That doesn't mean I can't be angry at you at the same time."
Anders shrunk down on himself. "I did warn you..."
Hawke groaned and shook her head. "Yes, constantly. So much that I stopped paying attention to it. After awhile I thought you were just self-depreciating or something. You know usually it's the woman that does that."
"Well, I am the pretty one."
Hawke's exasperated screech threatened to bring the barn down on them as she suddenly chucked a scrap of the rotten blanket at him. Anders didn't care. These past few days he was sure she was following him out of some sense of duty, or punishment, or just to make him miserable. He didn't think it was possible for anyone to care for him now that the world knew what kind of monster he was.
"I love you too," he finally said. "Thank you for staying."
She rubbed her hands together. "There's one thing though... an ultimatum if you will."
Anders felt his stomach seize up. "Yes?"
She chucked another scrap of blanket at him. "If you do ANYTHING like that ever again, especially without telling me what you're planning, I swear by the Maker that I will march straight to Amaranthine and make a hat out of that cat of yours."
He laughed, a real laugh this time. "I've no such intention. I've done what I needed to do, and now the world will do the rest." He rubbed his eyes. "You're not serious, are you?"
Hawke slowly stretched out to lie on the tattered blanket. "Not really, but try me and you never know."
She rolled over after that and made it clear that the talk was over and she was going to go to sleep. With little food and a miserable shelter, sleep was the only comfort there was. Anders felt tempted to try and join her, but it was too soon. Instead he quietly designated himself as the first watch of the night and settled himself in.
Being hated by the world was trivial now, because there was one person left who still loved him. It was enough. It was all he needed.