Written for the Handers Reverse Big Bang 2018, for a great piece of art by kitsunebaba.
Hawke watches the rain come down cold, angry and relentless. It has been raining for three days now and if Hawke believed in vengeful gods, she would think it was meant as a punishment for Anders and her.
Some might say it was justice for what they had done but Hawke knows Justice intimately, in the most literal sense and she knows that Justice is on their side.
If she pokes her head out of the cave and squints her eyes, she can still see the pillars of smoke rising up from Kirkwall. No mage will ever again be a prisoner of the chantry in Kirkwall because the Chantry is gone. A last resort, a sign for all mages, an explosion for freedom.
It had been necessary, to finally make a difference but it wasn't without cost. Even with the Spirit of Justice on their side, Anders couldn't shake off the doubts and regret as the templars began chasing mages through the streets of Kirkwall, many of them giving into demons as a last resort to defend themselves.
It had been a mess, worse than ever before and Kirkwall has never been a place of peace and rest. When the last ship had pulled away from the Gallows, with Isabela at the helm, taking the remaining mages away from the grasp of the templars, Hawke and Anders had to leave too.
Anders never wanted to go, he was willing to let the anger of the city rip him to pieces. But Aveline and Varric and even the newly rogue templar Cullen all urged them to leave the city, to let the anger die out without them so that the city and its citizens could rebuild themselves.
It had been a frantic escape, not enough time to grab more than their weapons and packs. One of the many secret passages they knew took them into the woods of the Vimmark Mountains.
After six days of frantic running, with hardly a break in between and no more than three hours sleep at night, the rain forced them to look for shelter. The cave had been a blessing, the entrance to an old dwarven mine that had caved in long ago. Anders had fallen asleep before Hawke even started the fire.
She watches over him, watches his beautiful face carved with deep frowns. The lines around his eyes tell of a time when he laughed happily and easily, but she can't even remember the last time he smiled. Even in his sleep, the doubts and regrets pester him like nightmarish spirits.
Occasionally Justice shows himself, using Anders' eyes and mouth to ask Hawke questions. But she has forbidden him to disturb Anders in his sleep, he needs it so much. Justice's curiosity has to take a backseat to Anders' health for now.
She feels sorry for the spirit. He has lost his purpose. As the spirit of Justice, he has tied his existence in the living world to the fight for mage rights and freedom. Now that they're on the run, he has left his purpose behind and it's making him question his right to existence.
Not for the first time, Hawke wonders if there is a way of getting Justice through the Veil, back into the Fade. Spirits are not meant to stay in the world of the living and merged with the body of a living being doesn't look like the best solution either.
Hawke stretches her magic out beyond the mouth of the cave, letting the blood sing in her veins. A rabbit, hidden under a bush not far from the cave, appears on her magical map. With a sigh she gets up, leaving the warmth of the fire to step out into the cold rain. She forms a single icicle, letting it shoot silently through the twilight and senses the life of the rabbit fade as it hits it.
Getting the rabbit out of the tangle of weed and thorny twigs is much more difficult than killing it, but at the cost of the skin on her hands, she pulls it out and brings it back into the cave.
Anders wakes, just as she begins to skin the rabbit.
"What happened to your hands?"
"The bush didn't want to give up the rabbit."
He gets up, rubbing his eyes as he leans over to her, his hand already alight with his healing magic. "Hold still."
Hawke waits in silence, letting his magic seep under her skin. There is a certain intimacy to this, something that he has always denied but to her it feels like he touches her with the core of his soul.
The skin mends under the golden glow of his magic. She looks up to him. He always used to have a serene expression on his face when he healed, a calm state of internal negotiation. But now he looks stressed, angry even and the sleep he has gotten has done nothing to soften the frown on his forehead.
"How do you feel?" She asks him, bracing herself for his answer.
The glow in his hands fades away and he looks up to her. "I'm so tired."
She puts her hand on his cheek. "I know love, you should sleep some more."
He turns his head to kiss the inside of her hand. It seems to calm him, the frown on his forehead disappearing, and she pulls him forward to lay his head on her shoulder.
He sighs, his shoulders sacking before he speaks again. "I don't mean like that. I'm not just tired, I feel like I'm being torn apart, like I'm being drawn..."
Fear grips her heart with ice-cold claws. Anders is a Warden and the Calling is a destiny he will not escape, no matter how much she wishes he could.
"And its..." he continues, his voice muffled from her coat. "I keep asking myself, did I do the right thing?"
"We, Anders, we did. And yes, it was the right thing. You exhausted all other options, you were much more patient than I would have been."
"So many mages died, so many people."
"Mages died every day in the Gallows or were made tranquil. They were not safe. No one in that city was, not after Meredith had called for an Exalted March. She was willing to level the city for her belief of purity without magic."
"We started a war," Anders says.
Hawke puts her hands on his shoulder and makes him sit up. "Yes, because we needed one. Change is never given to the oppressed, they have to fight for it. True change is never quiet."
Anders leans his forehead against hers. "I'm so grateful that you're here with me."
"I'm with you on every step, you should know that." She holds herself still, willing her own calm to seep into him. Touching her has always grounded him. After years of being denied his natural desires and being held in solitary for a year, he has always been hungry for touch. Stroking his back, she projects warmth into her hands to soothe the tension in his muscles.
Slowly, she can feel him relax, leaning into her touch. He captures her lips, kissing her with that familiar hunger. With a moan she relaxes, only now realizing how tense she is herself. His tongue dives into her mouth and pulls her closer. She melts into his embrace, desiring, craving him with the same fire that burns in him.
Just as her hands find their way under his shirt, Anders jumps up, light cracking through his skin and his eyes light up the cave with blue light that overpowers the warm orange from the fire.
"The Veil! We must go! Lyrium. The Veil is thin." Justice's voice howls through the cave.
"Andraste's arse," Hawke jumps up and yells, "Justice, we've talked about this! You can't just take Anders over in moments like this."
Anders' face with Justice's eyes looks at her as if he has forgotten that she's there. "The Veil!"
"Can bite my pretty arse. Go back in, Justice."
With a last flare, the blue light disappears and Anders stumbles into her arms. "What... what did he do?"
"What did you feel?" They had discovered a little while ago that Anders could grasp a glimpse of Justice's emotions right after Justice has retreated again.
"He's desperate. He's yearning for something, something close by." Anders sits down and holds his head in his hands, pressing against his temples.
"Are you in pain?"
"My head hurts. My heart is beating too fast."
"Has this happened before?"
"No. I felt tired often but this..." Anders shakes his head. "It's pulling at me, at us, something, is drawing us..."
"He said something about the Veil. That it's thin."
Anders stares at her. "The veil? He feels the veil? He hasn't felt it in a long time."
Hawke searches her senses, stretching her magic out but all she can feel is the usual background hum of insects and small animals and the overwhelming presence of Anders and Justice.
Mages can sense other mages and Justice makes Anders stand out even more. Or maybe it is because she is so attuned to him and his emotions. Watching him now, his head in his hands, she can feel his confusion like physical pain.
"What can we do?" she asks, kneeling down beside him.
"I'm not sure. I think... maybe this is important? There have been rumors about the Veil and its strength for years, how it thins in areas of great loss. The Blight. "
He looks to her for confirmation but of what she isn't quite sure. "You want to investigate this?"
"Maybe?"
It is a strange moment. They didn't have a plan when they left, they just ran. Hawke has imagined them to one day be walking around Thedas, a traveling healer and his bodyguard. They wouldn't have stayed in one place for long, maybe search out free mages. Spread the word about freedom for the mages, find communities and tell them that the chantry has lied to them. Show them what good magic can do.
She didn't imagine going into an abandoned mine, possibly the damned Deep Roads, following the desire of a spirit.
"And then what? " she asks. "What will we do?"
"I don't know. But if the Veil is tearing, we have to know." Anders is already turning towards whatever is pulling him into the darkness of the tunnels. "We have to know." His voice has changed, the deep timbre of Justice vibrating under Anders'.
Hawke sighs, watching him disappear into the darkness, blue light shining around him like a beacon. She throws some more wood on the fire and flicks a fireball into it. As she guts the rabbit, she hears Anders stumble around in the darkness, the blue light of Justice throwing shadows against the walls whenever she looks over to him.
"Justice!" she calls out as she holds the rabbit over the fire. "Come here, Anders needs to eat."
"We have to find the tear." Justice's ghostly voice comes from deep in the tunnel.
Hawke projects her voice to him, "Anders needs to eat. We will investigate after we eat."
She waits to hear him turn around, anger slowly building up at the silence. But at last, Anders' footsteps come back to her, and she hears from the heavy sigh as he sits down, that Justice has retreated again.
"The main tunnel looks broken in but there is a side arm that seems to be open," he says, his voice back to the calm, raspy tone that she loves so much.
"Do you think it will be safe?" Hawke pokes the rabbit with a darting flame from her fingertip to speed up the roasting.
"I'm not sure. We have to be careful."
The rabbit begins to smell delicious and Hawke tears off a piece to hand it to Anders. "Don't dwarves say that they hear the stone?" She bites into the meat, only now realizing that she had not eaten since the morning. "Maybe we should have taken Varric with us."
"And hear him complain about it the whole time? No thanks." Anders eats fast, always has. The Circle, being an apostate on the run and being a Warden, none of these occupations lend themselves to peaceful meals. Now he stuffs his face with rabbit meat so quickly, that she fears for his safety.
"Love, slow down, I'm not gonna steal your food," she says, keeping her voice light.
He halts, a piece of rabbit leg half way on its way to his mouth. "I'm sorry. I'm not..." He puts the meat back down, chewing what's already in his mouth until he can speak clearly again. "There is this urgency..."
"From Justice?"
"Yes. It's like when he used to make me work on the manifest, on the letters to the Chantry. Justice's focus is singular, he only knows his cause and drives me to do it."
"And his cause now is to get to the Veil?"
"That's what I get from him, I think..." He stops mid-sentence, blue light shining out of his eyes and his voice becomes hollow again.
"It is a passage into the Fade. I can go back."
The thing that Hawke hates the most about Justice taking over Anders, apart from the unnerving puppetry, is the way his skin cracks and the essential light of Justice seems to rip him apart. It pains her to see the man she loves like that, like a puppet, burning at the seams.
She averts her eyes. "I thought you said you couldn't go back, that is would kill you."
"I was convinced of that. But now I believe that I could pass through if the Veil is thin enough." He gets up, pacing in the limited space.
"Could that process hurt Anders?" She squints at the glowing eyes, trying to read the ghost in the puppet.
"There is never absolute certainty. But I am convinced that Anders will be unharmed." Justice stops and goes down on one knee in front of her. "Anders deserves to be free of me. And I would like to go home."
Hawke nods. "I understand. Let me talk to him now."
The glow disappears from Anders' eyes as if someone snuffed out a candle and he looks around, confused as to how he got to kneeling in front of her. "Did Justice just propose to you?"
A giggle breaks out of Hawke, long lost in the turmoils of the last days, weeks or even months.
"No, he didn't. You're going to have to do that yourself, my dear."
A glimpse of a painful expression passes over Anders' face, and they both deliberately ignore it. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her, softly. Some tight ball of tension in her chest begins to loosen as she melts into his kiss.
She breaks away with a sigh, leaning her forehead against his. "Justice thinks he can pass back into the Fade if the Veil is thin."
"He wants to leave me?" Anders sits down with a shocked expression. Hawke realizes that she had not taken Anders' attachment to Justice in consideration. He would probably miss the connection, as inconvenient it often was.
She takes his hand in hers and draws circles over his skin with her thumb. "He wants to go home. And he wants you to be free of him."
"But he could die." Now Anders gets up and paces around in the small cave. The uneven ground makes him stumble, and he almost bumps his head on a rock. "That's why I let him merge with me in the first place. He couldn't stay as a spirit in our mortal world, and he couldn't go back. Spirits turn into demons if they are separated from the Fade, but the Veil was closed to him. Passing it would have killed him, that's what he said."
"He thinks, if the Veil is thin enough, he can pass through without harm to you or him."
"What if he's wrong?" Anders sits down again, absentmindedly grabbing a piece of rabbit bone and bites off the flesh. "What if it kills him?"
Hawke hesitates to say what she thinks. "Forgive me love, but my priorities lie with you and your wellbeing."
"I understand. Justice leaving me would probably not affect me, not physically at least." Anders stares into the darkness of the rainy night outside the cave. His foot is twitching in a fast rhythm.
Hawke doesn't ask what the non-physical effects would be, but the question has set its claws into her mind now and will not let go. How will Anders, this man, who she knows and loves, change? What kind of person is Anders without Justice?
She lets the silence grow until the rabbit is gone and the fire has died down. "I think we should take that side tunnel and see where it leads us. We can go for a while before we need rest."
Anders' leg stops bouncing, and he looks at her as if he just woke from a dream. "Yes, that sounds good."
They pack up and walk into a small, steep tunnel. The walls look rough; someone drove into this rock with a pickaxe and no sense for beauty or symmetry.
"Not made by dwarfs," Hawke says.
Anders nods, but he seems to be lost in thoughts. He follows her and the light she casts ahead with a flame in her hand. Occasionally she has to tell him to duck his head, lest he'd knock himself unconscious on a stalactite.
The tunnel ends abruptly at a cave in. Huge boulders block their way, but there is a small opening to the side that a child could use. Neither of them will fit through it. Hawke ignites a few Felandaris plants to give them a light to see their surroundings by.
She extends her senses, but it's difficult. She can feel the livelihood of rats and mice on the other side but also some intangible presence of more massive creatures over the hum of the Fade. "The Veil is definitely thin there, I can almost feel into the Fade."
Blue light from behind her back tells her that Justice has taken a look as well, but he quickly retreats.
Anders shakes his head, rubbing his temples. "I can feel the Fade close by."
Hawke takes his hands off his head and holds them to her chest. "I can feel it too. We should rest here and try to find a way to the other side later."
"Are you sure? I can keep going for a bit."
"If the Veil is so weakened here, what do you think we'll find once we get close to the tear?"
Anders shudders at the thought. "Giant spiders. You're right, we should be well rested and well prepared before we go in there."
Hawke takes their packs and sets up their mats in a small nook where they can see the barrier of rocks and also in the direction where they had come from. She feels relatively safe here, but her life has taught her well enough that you can never be too sure.
She sets a slow-burning fireball on top of a rock and lets it absorb the heat dripping off it. Anders still stands in front of the barrier, occasionally glowing in blue light until Justice takes over entirely.
Hawke steps over to him. "Justice. What will happen to Anders when you leave?"
The face she loves, marred by light bursting through the skin, turns to her and focuses its glowing eyes on her.
"He will be himself, he will be Anders."
"But will he not be different?"
"He will be Anders like he was before." The cracked face is blank, but there is a hint of empathy in Justice' voice.
Hawke takes a rattling breath, tears threatening at the edge of her voice as she says what has been gnawing at her for the last hour. "But that's not the Anders I know."
Justice is silent for a while, his gaze on her unfaltering. "He will still love you after I'm gone. He has always loved you, from the very first moment."
Hawke stares to the ceiling, anywhere but into that blank face. "Yes, but he has never been without you, as long as I know him."
"That what is him, what is Anders, will love you."
"But can I?" Hawke presses out in a whisper. "I fell in love with a selfless man, a healer who tried to heal the whole world. A desperate man, fighting for more than himself. And that's not who he was before you." She looks back into Justice' glowing eyes. "Maybe he'll love me but will I still love him?"
Justice holds her gaze, the blue glow pulsing. "I do not know."
She shakes her head. "I know, I know. Don't ask the spirit of Justice about love." She gives him a short smile and puts her hand on his shoulder. "I want to talk to Anders now."
Justice nods and the blue light fades from his eyes. The cracks in his skin close and Anders' eyes come alive again. He almost stumbles but she holds him steady.
"Hey, love, I got you."
He leans forward and kisses her, overwhelming her in a kiss that leaves her breathless. When he pulls back, she launches herself at him, pulling him back down for another kiss. Before they can hurt themselves on the low hanging stalactites, she steers them over to the nook where she set up their mats.
They walk, stumble and at last crawl over to the mats on the ground, Hawke almost burning her hand on the heated stone. They are desperate, mad in their desire to rid the other of their clothes. A boot flies off, vests and shirts following while she can't stop cherishing his skin with her lips. Finally, he is mostly naked and she presses her bare chest against his, feeling him, holding him as if her life depends on it.
His hands roam over her back, his lips caressing her neck and she sighs out in relief to finally feel him like this again.
The sigh must have sounded worrying to him because he pulls back to look at her. "I know you're worried, my love."
"I always worry about you."
"But I know that you — "
"Shh," she interrupts him. "Not now. I just want you. Worry later."
Instead of an answer, he kisses her again, silent in their agreement to ignore the question that still claws at the back of her mind. But if this is the last time she'll have Anders as she knows him, then she will take everything he can give her.
He kisses down her body, removing the remaining clothes and smalls from her while she pulls down his trousers. As soon as she can, she grabs his ass and pulls him towards her trembling core. "Please, I need you."
"Patience, my love." He grins at her and kisses down her chest, her stomach until he reaches the apex of her thighs. His kisses turn into licks, softly circling her clit until she whimpers, teetering on the edge of her pleasure.
She whines as his mouth leaves her when he crawls back up only to moan when he finally enters her, touching her very core like only he can and she cries out in bliss. When she comes back to her senses, she flips him on his back, riding him until her wave crests again, pulling him along as she pulses around him. He shakes in her arms and she holds him close until both their tears are dry.
Hawke wakes to the blue light of Justice standing in front of the rocky barrier again.
"Andraste's dirty knickers, will you let him rest! It won't do you any good if he gets killed by a giant spider because he's too tired to react."
Justice turns to her. "I am sorry."
"Lay back down here and let him sleep."
Anders' body steps over to the mat and lies back down. Justice looks over to her, his glow slowly receding.
"Are you excited?" she asks.
The blue glow intensifies. "My expectations are high."
"Are you afraid?"
"I do not fear."
"Sorry, wrong spirit to ask."
"I do worry for our well being."
"No separate spirit for worrying, huh?" She chuckles to herself.
"I do not understand."
"Yes, it's fine. Aren't you going to miss mortal humor? Is there comedy in the Fade?"
Justice stares at her. "The Fade is home."
Hawke yawns and curls back up under her coat. "I understand. You're going home. Now, let Anders sleep."
The blue light recedes and Anders snuggles up against her arms. She watches his face as he dreams, glimpses of emotions alternating with a relaxation. He walks the Fade in his dream, and she wonders what he sees.
When the frown on his forehead becomes deeper, and his hands are clenching, she softly shakes his shoulder to wake him.
"Anders, wake up."
He wakes with a jolt, staring at her with unseeing eyes until he recognizes her. "What?"
"Nothing, we should just get going."
With their packs bundled up and tied to their backs, they examine the rocky barrier that protected them overnight but now hinders their progress.
"Justice has told me that he has high expectations," Hawke says, watching Anders' face for a reaction.
"I'm..." the frown on his forehead grows deeper again, "I'm still not sure it's the right thing to do. It's a risk, I'm not sure if we should take it."
"We can go back," Hawke suggests.
"No, I.." he rubs his temples, "I think Justice wouldn't let me. He wants it so much, his whole being is pushing me towards the Veil."
"Well, we know how single-minded he is."
Anders bows his head. "I never said it, but I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For keeping it all secret. For not trusting you."
"You know I would have done anything," she says, letting her disappointment come through for once. After all they had done, after working so hard for mage rights, that he had left her out at the very end, that had hurt.
"I wanted to protect you," Anders says. "It was a foolish idea, I know."
"Indeed." She looks at him, waiting for him to say more.
"I promise, from now on, no more secrets," he finally says. "I will not keep anything from you ever again."
"Thank you, I promise to do the same." She hesitates, playing with the snowflakes forming in her palm as she readies her ice spell. "And in that interest, I want to say that I'm worried about Justice separating from you."
Anders nods, his hands glowing from a fireball forming. "I worry too, we don't know how it will affect him. He could die..."
"No, I worry about you!"
"I don't think I'm in danger, my body..."
Hawke throws the ice shards to the ground and turns to him. "No, I worry who you will be."
"Who I will — oh, I see." The fireball pulses in his hand, casting a bright light on his thoughtful face. "I will be me. Probably a bit more scatterbrained than you know."
"Just don't... don't scatter away from me," she says, too afraid to voice all her concerns.
"I won't, I swear." He holds up the fireball, letting it spin in angry flames. "Now, are you ready?"
"You'll do the barrier?"
"Yes."
"Then go ahead."
The fireball whirls forward, sticking to and heating up the boulders to a bright orange glow until Hawke casts her ice spell and rapidly freezes everything. The barrier explodes in a shower of granite shards, raining against Anders' barrier.
The sound of the explosion echoes ahead of them, and they both ready their staffs as they walk forward into the darkness. Hawke holds her hand out with a greenish flame of light that spills far and wide into an unnatural hallway.
"Andraste's arse, it's the damn Deep Roads," Hawke curses with clenched teeth.
The green light spins away from her hand, floating out in front of her. It lights up overgrown rectangular columns and pointed arches, covered with dwarven designs and runes. Some sections are destroyed, but the general structure seems to hold up to the excellent reputation of dwarven architects. Their overly sturdy design is truly engineered for the ages.
"This isn't really a surprise," Anders says.
"No, I guess not," Hawke sighs. "Do you think they abandoned this part?"
"If the Veil has always been thin here it might have — how do they say it — it might have disturbed the song of the stone."
"Or they were just fed up with all the spiders," Hawke says, pointing her staff towards movement in the shadows. She throws out a Wall Of Ice just in time for the first wave of spiders to get stuck in it as another horde of them drops from the ceiling. There is no time to think, to look around, as they fight off hordes of beasts that keep coming at them relentlessly.
Hawke feels her mana dwindling as she entraps another pack of spiders in ice. Demons have now joined the attackers, and for every demon they strike down, two new ones seem to appear. She casts a mana surge as a last resort so that she can use a defense spell while she gets another lyrium potion from her belt. Her reserves are getting dangerously low, and they only made it a few paces into the hall.
"This is not going to end well if we don't do something about that rift," she yells at Anders, raising her voice over the noise of his fiery magic exploding spiders around them. It would all be a beautiful sight, his fire and her ice slaying down the fade touched creatures, but they hardly have time to map their surroundings while they struggle not to get overwhelmed.
Justice takes over Anders' body, his blue light cutting through his skin and his shield abilities encasing them both for a short break. It's almost silent in this temporary circle of purple light.
"The rift in the Veil is over there, we have to get to it, and I will close it from the inside. It will stop the demons and paralyze the spiders."
"I can't see it, you have to point me to the rift," Hawke says, heaving in air as she can feel one of Anders' healing spells wash over her.
An arc of light jumps from Anders' staff and hits a translucent green wave a few steps away from them. A faint green light is all that stays after the arc stops enlightening it, but it's enough to know where they have to go.
Justice retreats and Anders collapses, holding his head. Justice's shield crumbles around them, and Hawke grabs him by his arm and drags him over to the faint green light. She casts ice barriers around them as she moves and every armor spell she knows. She even casts flames although they are never as powerful as Anders'. But Anders isn't fighting, he's arching in pain as Justice' light flickers and breaks through his skin only to collapse again when it goes out.
Hawke leans Anders against a boulder and shields him with her body, casting a spell against a rage demon and hitting a spider on the head with her staff as her mana drains by the second.
"Justice!" she screams, kicking a spider that has gotten hold of her leg. She can see the familiar blue light erupting behind her and then it moves.
Anders sits up, his hands stretched out towards the green rift as Justice moves away from him as a figure of light in armor. His transparent form steps into the green light and it encloses him, swallowing him. He turns around before he disappears entirely and says, "I thought we would have more time. Thank you, Anders, for all you did for me."
The green rift swallows him up as Anders calls out after Justice and then explodes in a green flash with a deafening sound. The remaining demons and spiders around them drop dead, disintegrating in smoke and Anders falls backward.
Hawke catches his head before he hits the ground. He is unconscious and doesn't react to her calling his name. She swallows more potions, one for strength and one with lyrium and looks around. The spiders in the near vicinity are all dead, but she can already hear the sound of hundreds of legs approaching their position.
"Andraste's flaming arse," she swears, pulling Anders up. "Come on, you have to wake up."
She shakes him until he finally reacts. "Hawke, are you alright?"
"So far, yes. But we have to get out of here, right now."
"Yes." He struggles to stand up, but his legs give out under him. "I seem to.. I can't..." His eyes roll back as he struggles and she catches him again before he falls over.
"Get on my back." She kneels down in front of him and pulls his arm over her shoulder.
"You can't, you have to leave me."
"Shut up." She heaves him up on her back, holding his legs at her side and pulling him up by his hand. With all the strength she can muster, she stands up. She can feel him trying to hold on as she starts to walk, but he seems to slip in and out of consciousness, his hold on her slipping.
She ignites her light again, trying to find the gap in the rocks where they came through. The sounds of spider legs come closer, chasing her.
"Where is the damn thing?" In the darkness, everything looks the same around her, and her faint green light can't penetrate it. She keeps walking, carefully finding her way on the uneven ground. A wrong step now would be a death sentence.
Then, for a moment, she sees a light, just a tiny glimmer. She walks towards it, and as she comes closer, she recognizes the Felandaris, the plant she had ignited with a magical flame to light the tunnel. With renewed energy, she makes her way through the opening, out of the Deep Roads back into the mine.
With a snarl, she turns around, gathering her magic in her hand and throws a weak fireball against the upper part of the opening. It's not quite as impressive as before, but when she ices the rocks again, it is enough to break pieces out of the ceiling, collapsing that part of the tunnel.
She walks on, stomping upwards, out to the cave where they had started. Her green light shows her the way until she reaches natural light again.
The rain still falls out there, and lightning strikes the skies, but it's the most beautiful sight she has ever seen. She sinks down on her knees, letting Anders slip from her back and lies him down on her pack. She pours a healing potion over his lips and drinks one herself.
She tries to wake him, shaking his shoulder. "Anders, please." But he doesn't wake, only his eyes move rapidly behind his eyelids. Letting her head fall against his chest, she sobs until exhaustion takes her over. Laying down on his chest, she listens to his breathing.
It still rains when he stirs, waking her from a light sleep. She sits up, looking into his eyes, not sure what she hopes to see in them.
"Hawke," he says, raising his hand to feel her face. "Thank Andraste, you're well."
She takes a shuddering breath, desperately holding on to the last shreds of hope around her heart. "Anders, do you feel alright?"
He holds up his hands, twitching his fingers. "Everything seems to be working. I..." he gets a removed expression on his face, "I can't feel him anymore. He's truly gone." Magic fire lights up his hands and quickly dies out again. "I remember this."
"Remember?"
"My magic. How it felt before. Even my own magic was different with Justice and now... it's like it was before."
She stares at him, trying to see how much of the Anders she knew is still the person she is looking at. He plays with tiny flames, letting them jump over his fingertips. Getting up, he stretches his legs and spins around on his toes. There is an ease, a lightness to his movements that she hasn't seen before.
He stops mid twirl, looking at her as if he had forgotten that she is there. It's another stab in her heart, to see how he isn't attuned to her anymore.
"Hawke," he calls out, rushing over to her to kneel in front of her. "Do you think...? You think I'm not me anymore."
She can't stop the tears running down her face.
"Marian, love, no," he says, taking her hands in his and kissing her knuckles. "You don't even know. Maker's grace, I love you so much. I never dared to dream that in this world, in my life, I could ever have what we have."
Her breath turns into a sob but relief makes her smile. "You're still you?"
He kisses the trail of tears on her cheeks before he leans back to look at her. "Yes, I'm still me and I still love you. I might make more silly jokes now but I'm still me."
She laughs out, even though she can't stop the tears. "I love your silly jokes."
With the back of his finger, her wipes her tears away. "You shall hear many. Possibly a little less preaching about mage rights and manifests, but I won't forget what we fought for."
Hawke takes a deep breath, letting the tension fall off her back. Anders strokes over her shoulders and arms and she realizes that he's looking for injuries, always the healer.
"Hawke, you're injured. That's a spider bite," he calls her out.
"I took a health potion."
"One? Against spider poison? Like that's enough. Maker's breath, woman." His hands are already glowing in golden light, healing her. She relaxes into his arm, into the familiarity of his touch.
When she feels the ache in her veins recede, she opens her eyes. "Do you think Justice is well?"
The magic tingles on her skin as a smile spreads on Anders face. "I saw him, I think, in the Fade."
"You remember the Fade?"
"Not quite, but I know I saw him."
He still smiles and Hawke can't get enough of how the wrinkles around his eyes seem to crinkle. "Was he happy?"
"Yes, I think he was."
"How do you feel now?" Hawke asks him. She sits up and traces the corner of his lip with her fingertip, mapping that smile.
"That urge to visit spiders in the Deep Roads is definitely gone." He turns his beautiful smile to her and kisses her fingertip. "I don't know where to go now."
A beam of light reaches their spot in the cave. The rain has finally stopped and the sun warms the world. Fog rises from the grass and bushes.
Hawke stands up and steps into the sunlight. "Anders, can I excite you for a life as a travelling healer? I'll be your bodyguard, nobody will know who we are. Just for a bit."
Anders comes up to her and wraps his arms around her from behind. They don't look back to Kirkwall. "That sounds wonderful," he says. "And I know, in time, you will love me again."
Hawke turns around in his arms and smiles up to him. "I think, I'm already starting."
"I'm glad." He kisses her forehead. "What do you think, should we wander for a bit? I had quite enough of caves and tunnels."
"Me too," she says.
They take their packs and walk up into the mountains in the rising fog. They don't look back towards the city. They have a new life to make their way to.