The premise: Hawke is turned Tranquil after the events of the end game. Justice brings the Fade out with him when he manifests, as seen in the Anders recruitment quest. These are snippets of character views, based on elements of nature.
Hawke - Water
Once she drowns, she stops caring that she can't breath. In the smallest way, it is a relief, to know that there will be a release from the terror of knowing she is Tranquil.
In the moments she is lucid, the moments she is her, as much as she wants to scream at them, to beg them to put her down, she still remembers every word, every gesture made while Tranquil she floats dead and serene in a still ocean of nothing.
In the ever increasing moments when the Fade crashes into her, a wave of dream, of feeling, of vivacity, sweeping away her bland little puddle, Tranquil she has already efficiently categorized the events and moments that will need or deserve an emotional response. Fenris and Justice have both, through trial and error, learned to stand back a moment while she chokes her way through, blessedly distanced by time, but still raw.
She flies, soaring so high in her elf's arms, unashamed that the Fade spirit hovers close, watching. Aware that somewhere inside that body, Anders watches as well.
It might not be fair, but the Mage will get moments of his own. Tranquil she doesn't care who uses her body (and she made sure to tell Fenris this, to make him understand that the dead feel nothing, and she cares for the Mage, as well), and this on occasion enrages Justice despite the damage he does to the host, bringing her surging to color while her body writhes. Anders fights himself, strangling the spirit back, in order to control himself, and for fleeting moments, he has her.
It isn't fair, and it isn't good, or easy, but it is what they have. Anders brings scent and sound, breathing into her saturated lungs and driving out the water. He gives her back to herself, by giving up himself. Eventually, sporadically, how could she not love him too?
Fenris knows. There can be no secrets. That elf and mage have reached some accord, Tranquil she has seen, she knows, but there is never any time to wonder, or to care.
But the tide is coming in. She cringes, breath pressing out of her lungs. She wants to beg them to kill her, she can't take it anymore. Instead, she smiles, breathing out 'I love you', to each, to both, there are only so many seconds left. But once she drowns, she will stop caring that she can't breathe. It is almost a relief.
Fenris – Air
He lives for the moments that the eye of the storm finds him. The savage whorls that toss him about ease, heralded by an abominable blue glow, the rage of Justice, of Vengeance. It is the only time he feels real.
The only time the vice in his chest releases, when the light in her eyes is not simply a reflection of the sun.
He'd not imagined his future at her side to be so desolate, but it is better than nothing. Better than death. Brief shining moments in a broken lifetime of harrowing twisters.
The doll haunts him, with blank eyes and a voice devoid of care. Obedient, malleable, a burden. Willingly borne for the sake of soft eddies, errant breezes, when the storm rages on all sides, but with her, with soft touch and ghosted breath, however it may howl, it can't touch them.
For a moment.
He sells his soul to gain those moments, giving himself willingly to the revolution of the mages. When Anders falters, lost and hopeless, he takes up the reins, driving it forward with the ideals of the mage's own manifesto, found littered around Marian's house.
It is the surest way to bring Justice without driving the mage from their side. If he loses Anders, he loses Justice. If he loses Justice, he loses her, and all he is left with is the doll. He would shackle the mage to her, were it necessary.
He knows it is not. He ignores that, as best he can.
Most days, he isn't sure if he is alive. But the moments in the eye of the storm…
Anders - Fire
The entire world is ash, burnt out and crumbling at his feet.
He'd expected metaphorical fire. He'd expected the Chantry to be consumed, as the flames of revolution licked the holy stones. He'd even expected the more than occasional actual fireballs thrown from the fingers of combatants.
He'd never imagined the grey shift of cave walls, dirt floors, running, hiding, while everything tastes of charcoal. She takes taste and color with her when she goes, coating every facet of a life he shouldn't have with a patina of soot, guilt and grief and desolation.
Passion burns, he remembers. It feels like distant memory, to find it he needs to cast back to the days spent in Kirkwall, before he set the world, his world, on fire, and incinerated everything he loved.
No one needs to point out the irony. Anders was supposed to be the martyr, a name to rally mages, now and in the future, to throw off their chains, throw down their oppressors, demand freedom at staff point.
Marian would not see him dead. It might as well have killed her. It would have been better. He can't quite wish it had.
Instead, Anders is a figurehead, nominally leading a rebellion that he, at least, has no fire for anymore. Instead, Fenris drives the movement, rubbing the ashen world in his face, tormenting and twisting him with the things he used to care about, until the elf taunts Vengeance forward, burning and blazing.
When Justice roars, Marian wakes.
That is why he suffers Fenris, whose life goal is now to goad the spirit, until the spirit explodes forth, tearing and cracking the flesh of his host, pushing Anders from his path until the mage is nothing but a passenger, relegated to a powerless spectator.
When Vengeance roars, the phoenix rises.
For Anders, there are but sparse moments, snatched from between the heartbeat when he can force Justice down, and the shutters close in her eyes, a moment or two when her fire scorches his heart, scours his soul. When her lips move against his, and she means it.
Until the world crumbles into ash.
Earth - Justice
Earth is mutable. Even stone changes, grinding to sand under the pressure of water and wind.
He sees through the eyes of a man who feels he has given too much, and gained too little.
Justice should be static, an unchanging principle. In the uncounted Ages in the Fade, it was just that. Immutable. In this ever fluid world of the living, mortality changes things. In places where there should be no compromise, agreements are reached, and Justice smarts under the shift of right giving way to necessary.
What is lost when one imposes mortality on an ideal?
Or an ideal on mortality?
He stirs at the injustices of the world, but bides his time, mostly. His host could not withstand his presence should he manifest at every slight to his namesake. The mage would shatter, broken under the weight of the Fade he brings.
No sane mortal being can live immersed in the Fade.
On occasion, Justice muses that the elf might serve better as host, driven as he is to guide the mages to freedom. Bitterly, Anders can only agree.
It isn't hard to pinpoint when it went wrong. When Justice became subject to change. The moment he slipped into living flesh, meeting the flare of Ander's rage, helpless to stop it as it soaked into him, consuming and corrupting.
When Justice fell, and Vengeance rose from his grave.
And Vengeance understands, somehow, that if he fails to grant the moments the elf seeks, the cause will be lost.
Earth is mutable. Even stone changes, grinding to sand under the pressure of water and wind. Vengeance is Justice, compromised.
