Justice was eternal, but mortals were not. Anders had wondered for a long time what that would mean when the time came for the Taint to claim him, though it became less important as his purpose worked its way towards the fruition that would wake up the world in a rain of fire and rubble.
He hadn't expected to survive the aftermath of what he had created. He didn't revel in his success like many thought he would: it had been bloody, costly, and unforgiveable.
Yet she had forgiven him.
The woman who was the last of all that was human in him had stayed. She had stood between him and those who would oppose him for years, and Anders could not have done any of it without her protection. Even at the last she had stood between Anders and Sebastian's fury, glaring at the prince without a hint of doubt in her eyes despite ears that still rang with the ferocity of the explosion and the knowledge that not only templars had died that day.
Hawke had left it all behind that day, and Anders wondered how long it would take her to truly realize what that meant. I was born hunted, and it looks like I'm going to die hunted so I don't see what's changed, she told him when he ventured to ask.
Together they ran, but even Justice was not tireless when shackled within a mortal body. They grew slow as the years passed, allies dwindling away due to time and circumstance until it was the only them.
It was Sebastian's hunters who found them when their mistakes grew too many: they left too much of a trail and stayed in one place for too long. They had been caught before, but even Hawke could grow tired.
Anders died when the bolt struck her heart, the bolt that was aimed for him but for the one last time she stood between him and Sebastian's vengeance. Every last hunter from Starkhaven died for it, their bodies ripped into shreds by magic and fingers and teeth, but it couldn't bring her back. Anders—or Justice, there was no more Anders—cradled her head in his lap once the rage had subsided, waiting for her to make a joke about hating being covered in blood but she never did.
She was silent and still where she had never been before. She had always been joy and life and the only shred that kept Justice and Anders clinging to humanity, and now she was dead.
Anders burned her with his magic, cradling her in his arms until she and the only thing remaining in this world besides his purpose was ash.
The rumors began in the countryside after that, whispers of something that was more corpse than man with bright blue eyes and glowing lines twisting through burned flesh. They said that he hunted and killed any who dared to travel at night wearing emblems of the Chantry, but eventually folks decided that was the kind of ghost story that was always made up during wartime. The stories and circumstances always differed, save for the slow march of the creatures towards Starkhaven.