His lips quiver as his hand comes up, fingertips ghosting across her jaw in a manner he wishes she could tell was comforting. The breath he lets out is shaky and unsure and he doesn't understand anything more than the painful ache that rips its way viciously into his chest. Her name is the quietest of whispers into air more sour than the taste along his tongue.
"Hawke..."
She blinks. Her eyes, dull and what seems lifeless, meet him. Head on and steadfast, undeterred by the emotion he can't control that seeps out at the sound of her voice. "Why are you looking at me like that, Anders?" He has never heard something so brutally bland.
Even when he had stumbled upon Karl in the Chantry over a decade before, it hadn't hurt quite this much. He can feel the pinpricks of mana and anger drawing close to his skin. Can feel as his conscious has to fight itself to keep Justice from overtaking him. No, he won't go there. Not now. Not when she's right there and needs him and looks so fragile laying out across the stone.
Behind him, he can hear the telltale clanking of metal on metal, boots along cobblestone, orders to search the perimeter. He wishes he had the strength to scoop her up in his arms and carry her from this Maker forsaken fortress.
"Hawke," he tries again, and though his tone is more sure the words still die before crossing his lips. There was so much he wanted to tell her and now there will never be enough time.
She cocks her head in this way that had him inhaling sharply, because for a split moment he thought he saw it. That spark of something curious and prying and all the woman he had once known. But then her eyes darken and she frowns without any real meaning behind it.
"You shouldn't be here, Anders. They will catch you, now. Nothing awaits you any longer save a slow execution."
He sucks in a lungful of the foul air. Swallows down a string of curses that taste more bitter than the nagging sense of defeat threatening to encumber him. "I know." His gaze catches hers. His fingers strengthen their touch, cupping her cheek. There is a warmth there that is almost foreign.
How strange to feel life still lingering within a body too broken to call alive.
"I am so sorry, Marian. After everything..." His voice breaks, and he has to look away before continuing. Outside, closer now, he can hear their impending death drawing nearer. "I know you don't love me any longer, but I have never loved anyone quite like I do you. You were everything good in my life for the short time I knew you. Please leave me knowing that you gave me the courage to carry on."
Hawke blinked. Nothing remotely emotional registered on her face as he reached up with his free hand, touched the lyrium burned into her forehead. Even when it scorched his fingers and Justice, or perhaps he himself, screamed, he didn't draw away. He held her gaze and held her face and ached for something he knew she couldn't give.
When the door behind them swung open, he didn't fight. Rough hands and rougher actions were used to pry him from her, and he watched through eyes nearly blinded by tears as she was uprooted from her seat and dragged out. Watched until something sharp connected with his temple and painful flecks of light danced in his vision and she disappeared around a shouldering guard.
He didn't plead with them. And he was silent as they cut him down.