[ AN: A short fight after Hawke's decision to side with the templars, and now she has to deal with Anders. A note on canonicity: This fic has, thus far, attempted to stick to canon dialogue in major events as much as possible. For instance, Meredith's lines at the beginning here are her canon lines. However, this conversation with Anders will not follow the in-canon dialogue. It is possible to make Anders side with the templars in the game, so long as he is at 100% Rivalry (which this Hawke and Anders were) but I imagine this Hawke's arguments were somewhat different than the reasoning the game gave. There are a few canon lines sprinkled throughout, but this conversation has been mostly rewritten.]

The first fight was over quickly, but it was only a harbinger of the long struggle that lay ahead. Meredith, spattered in blood, turned to Hawke as the last mage went down. "So, it begins. I must gather my forces at the Gallows. Meet me there as soon as you can, Champion." Her gaze slid to Anders, sitting off to the side on a worn wooden box. "I'll leave this… murderer for you to deal with. He's your companion. Do as you see fit."

Hawke had thought that she might feel some sort of vindication after all of this. She'd known from the start that Anders' cause was only going to lead to trouble, and lo and behold, here they were standing before the smoldering remains of the Chantry and on the other side of an agreement to kill every mage in Kirkwall. Some small measure of satisfied superiority in this situation would not go amiss, Hawke thought. That nice little 'I-told-you-so' feeling would be a nice little upside if she could find it.

She couldn't. Staring at the defeated Anders, back turned to her, Hawke couldn't bring herself to feel anything but exhausted. She just wanted to be done with this. With a resigned sigh, she crossed the space between them, walking up behind him.

He didn't turn as she approached, just kept staring straight ahead. "There's nothing you can say that I haven't already said to myself."

"You're an idiot." Hawke said flatly. "I believe I specifically said I didn't want you dragging me into this, yet here we are."

Anders shook his head slightly, voice sounding hollow as he spoke. "You don't even care, do you? You don't care about what I've done or the people involved in this. You're upset that I inconvenienced you."

She didn't know how to deal with this empty, defeatist Anders. He was too vulnerable, too raw. He'd laid everything in this scheme of his and now he sat before her without any defenses, and she didn't know what to do. It made her uncomfortable, just like when he'd lowered his defenses that night they'd been together. The dynamic was off and she didn't know how to play anything other than their normal roles. She and Anders fought, they argued, they spat fire and vitriol at one another. She couldn't do that with him like this. She'd break him if he kept this up, and she was entirely through with things getting broken today.

"You may think very little of me, Anders" Hawke said, "but I hardly think you're in position lecture me on morality right now. You know, I find myself wondering if this isn't somehow my fault. Everything in this damn city is, isn't it? Maybe we wouldn't be standing here right now if I hadn't turned you out that night. Maybe if I'd never invited you into the estate at all, we'd all be sitting around the Hanged Man right now, kicking back while nothing was wrong. Is this whole little scheme of yours just the throes of a jilted ex-lover?"

"Truly," Anders snarled, turning on her with outrage written across his face, "your narcissism knows no bounds, Hawke! This isn't about you, it was never about you!"

The rise that her words got out of him, was of course, part of why she'd said them. She was glad to see there was still some fight left in him. She needed that fight. She was planning on using it. She'd wondered if Justice would make a grand appearance at the site of his final plan, but the glow of possession did not rise to Anders' features.

"This has always been coming," he continued, voice rising to a shout. "Everything the Circle chooses to be has pushed us to this moment! Kirkwall was simply the place where it all finally broke loose!"

"What broke loose here, Anders, is hell! And the fault of it rests entirely on your head! Meredith's right: even if she wanted to stop the Rite of Annulment, you've forced her hand. Not that I think she does, but that's besides the point! What you've done here today is going to lead to the deaths of every mage in Kirkwall. And that's if we're lucky and this doesn't spread beyond here. Their blood is on your hands."

Anders turned away from her again, his posture going stiff. This time, he was not slumped forward and defeated, or filled with righteous fire. He was steeled, ready for an end. "I know it is. I accept responsibility. Kill me if you must, Hawke, I stand behind what I've done. This was necessary."

"No. I'm not killing you, Anders. You're not getting out of this that easily." Her voice was hard as she said the words. If he was steel, she was rock. "You really think this was necessary? Prove it. Stand up, pick your staff up off the ground, and come with me to the Gallows."

"What?" The confusion was plain in his voice. This hadn't at all been what he was expecting.

"Did that explosion blow out your hearing?"

He shook his head. "Fight with the templars. Against the Circle. Why?"

Hawke pointed up at the smoldering remains on the hill. "You knew what would happen when you did this. You knew that you were sentencing every mage here to die. The Rite of Annulment is your fault. Now, if I don't want to share their fate, you've forced me to have to help carry that out. You really think I'd let you turn me and the templars into your murder weapons and then give you the easy way out so you don't have to get your hands dirty?"

"I don't claim to be innocent of any of this, Hawke! I have blood on my hands!"

"Good," she said savagely, picking his staff up off the ground and thrusting it toward him. "You're going to have a lot more. I've got a feeling all of us will be ankle deep in it by the time we've sorted through this mess. Don't you think you owe it to those mages, deep down? If you've decided that they're a necessary cost in your quest to destroy the chance of compromise, you need to be the one to do it. If you think this sacrifice has to be made, if blood truly must be spilled, have the decency to pick up the knife, look them in the eyes, and give them a good death."

Slowly, Anders took hold of the staff, his confusion ebbing into simple disbelief. She didn't let go of the end she was holding yet; the conversation wasn't over until she said it was. He understood, logically, what she was saying, but he couldn't wrap his mind around it. "You're really not going to kill me?"

"It's not that you haven't given me ample reason, but if you're looking for penance, doing this is going to cost you a lot more than your life would, Anders. If I know anything about you from these last six years, I know that. You said you're willing to die for this, but the Circle mages aren't. You made that decision for them, and the way I see it, you've got a debt to them now. I'm not going to let you die until it's paid. What you do with your life after that is up to you."

"Perhaps you're right," he said. "Perhaps this is the best way to atone for what I've done."

"If we're being honest-"

"You always seem to be, Hawke."

"-I don't give a damn about your atonement or guilt or punishment. I don't even care that much about the Chantry. I really just need a healer at my back. I don't feel like getting into a long dragged-out fight without some backup, alright?"

It wasn't true. It was a defensive quip to hide behind her customary bluntness. She'd meant most of what she'd said to him early in this conversation about what he'd done, but there wasn't much chance that she'd admit that. If there was one thing Hawke knew deep down, it was that she was probably not as bad of a person as she pretended to be.

But, well, she'd been acting like a selfish jerk for her entire life. By this point she had a reputation to maintain, if nothing else.

She shoved her end of the staff at him with more force than necessary, feeling rather like she was throwing away something distasteful. He'd already been holding the other end, so there was no worry that he wouldn't catch it at least. Still, the harshness of the motion seemed to startle him out of the last of his confusion.

"Get up," she said, pulling her own staff free of its sheath. "We've got a Circle to annul."