Dragon Age A Compromise

**AN: **My second entry for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang. This one is for hawkeward and her incredible Justice piece. I loved getting to explore this side of him, and I hope I did both the character—and you!—proud.

Again, thanks to Jade for the wonderful beta. You're so often right, even when I don't want you to be.

The image for this fic can be found at imgur dot com slash lfaKmej dot jpg. For those not inclined to open a new tab, the description is: "Digital art of DA2 Justice in the Fade. He is twisted beyond recognition, exhibiting features of Kristoff, Anders, and his former form, as well as demonic corruption—he holds his helm in a clawed, demonic hand and feathers sprout from under his armor. He stands alone on a battlefield, surrounded by piles of templar corpses, but among them are also the spectral bodies of Nathaniel, Oghren, Velanna, and Sigrun."

* * *

**A Compromise**

—

**1. **

He comes into being.

Fade spirits are not born the way mortals are born. He will explain this to Anders later, once he has met Anders. Instead there is simply a moment of nonexistence and then there is a moment of existence, and awareness settles around him like a gold shroud in water: slow, elegant, and clinging.

An age passes as he learns what is and what is not, and what he is and what he is not. Other spirits pass him in the Fade, at once of one kind with him and unlike him in every way, and as he learns to keep this place and his shape together, he sees too that those who pass him keep other shapes and other names, hard and soft, dark and light, and all strong and whole in the knowledge of themselves.

_He _does not know himself. He decides that he would wish to.

And so when the first mortal steps its uncertain, trembling way into the place he thinks of as his, he does not fight and he does not flee. Instead he reaches forward, curious, and touches the mortal's mind with the edges of his own, finds a bright fresh-bruised memory sifted very near the surface. He grasps it, pulls it forth from the mist—and the mortal bends its head and clasps its hands and flinches away from the figures that spring up around it, whole-shaped and _solid _and edged in a way that he is not and his world is not, has never been. Fade-light slides gold and hot down the fuller of the foremost blade, lifted, heavy and broad in the hand of the helmeted leader.

"No," whispers the mortal, with a mortal's voice, and for the first time he becomes aware of what it is to fear.

The leader's voice booms out, metaled and echoing beneath the helmet. "This is the law."

The mortal lifts its face, a wild light brighter than any he has yet seen burning in its eyes, and spits, "_This is not justice._"

Then a bell tolls, distantly, golden and deep-voiced as the bells that once tolled in the City above him, and all at once the tableau vanishes into a sigh of mist. The mortal has awoken, he realizes, shaken, unsettled, and he reaches out his hand to the place where the armed ones stood like earth and stone, real, more concrete in this mortal's dream than every piece of Fade he has ever touched. Immutability in a world that is by its nature unfixable—impermanent.

The mortal and its dreams have vanished. They have left only fog.

Later, he will take the words the mortal spoke and turn them over, piece by piece, examining them from all angles like a new and curious toy. He will take apart the thing that is _fear _and pry into its workings, the cold place in the stomach it leaves behind, the quick lightning-blasts of its twin anger that strike at the heart to burn it, that leave behind the scorched and blackened fields of resentment in their wake. Later, he will turn the law to its letters, its rules that run so stark; later, he will pull apart the threaded weft of justice, so separate from the law in this mortal's mind, until he learns the pieces of meaning that weave through it, bright silver-sharp threads of reparation and rightness and _truth_. There is so little truth here in this place, not when it is so easily remade with a thought, with the dream of a thought.

For now, he studies only the place where the mortal stood in its dreams, where the mortal dreamed truth, where the mortal vanished to leave behind only ephemeral memory—and the stark startling permanence of words.

—

**2. **

Over time, he meets other mortals. Many of them share similar dreams, he finds, the cores of desire and rage and pride alike between them even through the ever-shifting Fade-twists the spirits mold for them in discrete detail—but there are others, fewer, who see something else in this world that they share with their loud, quick-living brethren than these same base urges: something high and noble, something refined, something unselfish.

He does not condemn his brothers and sisters for the desires they indulge in (and what a mortal thing, to know condemnation—and a mortal thing too, to consider its indulgence). There are times when he sees the power of a mortal's desire and a mortal's pride and he longs to touch it, to taste it, to draw his own power from the souls they so willingly bare; but if the humans have taught him condemnation they have also taught him patience, because there are things in the mortal world that do not come at a thought, because there are pains and pleasures and sacrifices that must be endured in the hope of obtaining something sweeter.

(Hope is another construct of those who die. He sees it in many dreams, both as tool and weapon. He does not understand it.)

And so he waits patiently for more glimpses of these ideals, of the idealistic mortals who dream of them, and though they do not meet again he does not forget the first one whose mind he touched. He does not know if it would have been different had he met another human first; he does not know if another, less vivid dream might have sent him down another path. These are human concerns, and for a very long time, he will not concern himself with them.

Once, he did not know the word justice. Now he does. That is all that matters. Except—except—

Except that he, who should not want, wants more.

—

**3. **

He drifts in the Fade, wanderer, wandering, seeking out the minds of those who suffer and searching through them for the ideal that spurs his thirst and never slakes it. He finds it here and there, half-glimpses that do little more than prick an open wound without healing, but never with that same world-rending gold fire that first snared him in its light. He, who once cared nothing for time and the passing of it, searches for an age.

Then, all at once, the outer reach of his mind catches on a cry like a cloak's edge on splintered wood, arresting him and the whole of his attention in one swift jerk. He draws nearer, or draws the place nearer to him, and the one cry becomes two becomes three becomes many, a hundred voices, a thousand, all trapped, all wounded, all suffering in the way that only mortals suffer. He does not understand, not at first, because even here he can see that these are unliving souls who have no right and no _tether_ to keep them trapped, but when he moves among them with outstretched hands and offers of help his fascination gives way, subsumed by horror, by _anger_, human values and not his and yet the only things he can name for what he feels, for these humans who are kept by blood magic against their will.

They do not hear him. They do not see him. They move and speak and suffer as he steps among them, between them, and he who once shaped Fade and knew its songs for his own is—helpless.

He remains. He can do nothing for them but—neither can he leave them, and perhaps it is not the strength he once thought it to know the humans as he does now. He stays and he learns their names and the faces they wear, so like and yet unlike the faces of his brothers and sisters, and he listens to the bells that toll the time in this haunted place, hour after hour and day after day, as if marking them might bring an end to their suffering. Time passes; the bell chimes; the people weep without tears and shout without voice.

This, he thinks at last, at the dawn of one of their false days, when the false light shivers and trickles through the gold-thick fog of Fade, is injustice.

It infuriates him, the realization of it. He had not known before this that the absence of justice was not its other half, that there was more than the Void where justice was not. This knowledge does not seep into him slowly as his awareness did in the first moments of his existence; this strikes him like the edge of a sword, sharp and cold and gleaming, a pale swift-curved flash of light that comes unheralded and unannounced. Only not there—and then—he-who-was is severed at once from he-who-will-be, wholly, irrevocably.

He will bring justice to them.

He will be Justice for them.

He waits for a long time with these people, listening to their cries, searching fruitlessly for the sorceress who thralls them, who revels in their agony and prolongs it. He cannot find her and that galls him; he cannot stop the innocents' cries and that galls him too, because his power means nothing here and his knowledge means nothing here, and if those cannot help him then he does not know what will.

Then, one day, someone comes who is neither dead nor Fade-wrought. Death-touched, certainly, for he knows some things of Wardens and their blood, but _mortal_, and living, and accompanied by other mortals. They speak quickly and purposefully in the way that only mortals can, and when they ask his name it is with the mortal certainty that he has one, because all things have names, because all named things have truth in them.

"Justice," he tells the leader, and names himself.

They are formidable together, this Warden and this Warden's friends and him, Fade-spirit, Fade-born. They give each other names that are not like his name: Velanna, Sigrun, Nathaniel, Anders. He does not mind them; their names do not matter. All that matters is the freedom of these who are trapped, the _righting _of this wrong. They aid him in this without question, without reserve; they slay the oppressor who torments the powerless, and when he feels the deep and profound snap of the unnatural tether than holds the people of Blackmarsh there he turns to the Warden, words of thanks in his mouth: human words, human sentiment.

Then the Fade wrenches around him with a sound like a scream, and there is no word in his world or theirs for the pain.

—

**4. **

He is _trapped_. In the mortal world in a _human's _body, decaying around him, fixed at once to one place and one moment in time with no sense of any of the world save what his human eyes can see and his ears can hear. Terrifying, to be so small—and exhilarating.

He had not thought himself to be so susceptible to novelty, not after his ages of existence, not after the wild boiling light that caught him up and stripped him of himself in one brilliant instant. But there is novelty in hands that are not spirit's hands, hands that may touch the softness of a dog's ears and the smooth waxy leaves of an aloe plant; hands that may catch on a splinter in pinpricked pain, that may run along the surface of water and disturb it with a touch. There is novelty in the difference between the cool curling caress of healing magic and the sharp orange explosion of fire at his feet, tightening his human skin against the heat, making his human breath come quick and shallow.

There is novelty in the flood of human memories he is master of, now. Memories of embraces and soft words and his own heart racing at a woman's smile—memories of hissed arguments and wishes whispered in the dark and the slim and terrible light of mortal dreams. These are not the dreams he knows, not the Fade-bright things that made his world and unmade it, not the hidden parts of the human mind slipping free of their shackles in sleep—no, these are so much _more _than that, ideals and hopes and unshakeable faith, clear and deep as a lake unstirred for a thousand lifetimes.

And all mortals—_all_ mortals keep these things inside themselves, he marvels, all this silver glory folded up and crushed into small dark spaces, seeping through the seams and joists where humans are held together by tendon, by sinew, at once magnificent and alarming. They frighten him, to be so strong, to hold back this frightening flood without madness as if it is a simple thing. They _awe_ him.

Sometimes, then, he thinks he understands Desire.

He has learned many things from observing this world over the—years, he knows now, and decades, and centuries, and as he travels with these humans—and elves—and dwarves—he learns more. Spirit, some call him, and others _demon_; it does not bother him, this misconception, because he knows what he is and what he is not—has always known. Neither is he disquieted by the one's questions—Anders. Anders, who asks him about desires, as if he is a common thing to be held subject to the whims of _want_. So many of his brothers and sisters have fallen prey to the pretty traps of lust, of pride, of blackened rage. He, Justice, is more than that. He_ will be _more than that.

But lyrium sings sweeter in this world than Fade-song ever did, and hearth-fire burns warmer than Fade-light, and when at night he stares into the cold clear gleaming of endless stars a thousand miles and more away, he finds himself, as ever—wanting more.

—

**5. **

He does not understand this human Anders. He is a mage, one of the few Maker-touched children who _knows_ the Fade as he does, and yet when Anders sees oppression, he looks away; when he ought to face oppression he only runs. Instead of honesty he hides behind a wall of human humor—and that, Justice knows, he will _never _understand—and looks to another for his decisions. It is not right; it is not _just_, and Justice does not approve.

But all the Warden's companions hold this same strange duality, he finds. Velanna kills those who are innocent and does not see the injustice of it; Velanna speaks kindly of her sister and befriends the Warden. Sigrun is a woman dead, like him, and alive, unlike him; Nathaniel is a thief who speaks warm, wise words, who comforts him in his times of confusion and calls him no demon. And Anders—Anders accuses him of desires and apologizes for it, laughs at himself and his escapes and his own oppression, complains of his own struggles and discomfort and yet does not hesitate to move forward. He is a complex, complicated, _frustrating _human, and Justice who had not known these thoughts struggles with their concepts for many weeks.

One day, when the fighting at Amaranthine ends and the dead are collected and the dying are put away to die, Justice takes his human body to the high solitary tower of the Keep. It is not unwounded by battle; here, there, bits of stone have been torn away, and the wind howls through the gaps in the battlements like the screaming of distant demons in the Fade—but no demon's voice ever raised chills on the bare skin of his arms. No demon's touch ever drew down the back of his human neck to make him shiver. He crosses to one of the windows made larger by flame and earth, feels the grit of ash and char beneath his fingertips, looks down, down, down.

Such fragile things, mortals. Such impermanent, delicate, breakable things. He cannot stand it.

"Let me know if you're going to jump. I'll count how many times you bounce off the ramparts."

Anders, here with his humor. Kristoff's body swivels in the morning light, and Kristoff's voice brings sound to the words in his mind. "Have you come for a reason?"

Anders leans one shoulder on a crumbling pillar and shrugs. "I saw you come up here. Thought I'd visit my favorite crumbling spirit-inhabited corpse."

"Your company is unwelcome," Justice says, turning to look again at the deep fall of wind and grass beneath the tower. "As is your sarcasm."

Anders sighs and does not move. "Don't you get tired of being so charming?"

"No."

A soft huff of air—and then an outright laugh, and Justice looks over his shoulder to see Anders press his hand over his mouth. "Something amuses you?"

"You do," Anders says through his fingers, and Justice thinks of better spirits than he: of valor, and compassion, and patience. Then Anders shoves away from the pillar and crosses to him, less amusement in his eyes now, and whistles as he glances out at the ground so distant from them both. "Long drop," he says thoughtfully, and knocks a pebble free to fall, wind-caught, to the yard below. "Actually," he adds, looking now at the horizon, "I came to say goodbye. The Wardens are leaving in the morning to make a tour of the country surrounding Amaranthine, to make sure there aren't any darkspawn left in hiding. I'm going with them."

"As you should. You are one of them."

One eyebrow lifts, and despite himself Justice marvels again at the expressiveness of human faces, at the broad swath of emotions so easily conveyed by a twitch here, by a muscle there. "Then you'll be fine without me, I suppose."

"Of course."

"Of course," Anders repeats, an odd inflection in his tone that Justice cannot read, and then he smiles and the look is gone. "Anyway. Take care, Justice. I just thought that for this last day, you shouldn't be alone."

Justice says nothing. Anders leaves, the tail of his hair the last thing Justice sees as he descends through the open stairwell, and for a long time Justice looks without seeing at the place where it vanished. A human thing, to be so concerned with loneliness. A human fear. A human desire.

He leaves without looking again at the window.

—

**6. **

He travels the Fereldan countryside for months, purchasing lodging when he can, when the lodgers permit it, preserving what is left of Kristoff's body as it begins to decay beyond repair. He sees dawns to shake the beauty from the heavens; he watches night-stars burst above a mirrored lake in silent glory. He sees a small child fall, and right itself, and stand. He sees mages fall beneath the yoke of templars with no word from them, no word from the witnesses, as if what has been done is right.

He sees injustice. He learns fury.

Anders's words dog him at every step and he realizes: _he does not wish to be alone. _

_—_

**7. **

When he sees Anders again Kristoff's body is a ruin, blackened teeth rotting in his head, bones crooked and porous, muscles trembling under the strain of keeping together these pieces that no longer fit. And yet—and yet—and yet Anders seems glad to see him despite these things that he knows humans do not care for, that he himself does not care for. Anders who is thinner, and who wears dark shadows beneath his eyes and behind them, as if in these six months death has begun to grip him, too.

He is not so carefree as Justice remembers. How odd, that humans should change so within such a short space of time. How odd, that a creature with a mind should be such a slave to the simple passing of moments. And yet he, and the body he commands—they are slaves, too.

_No,_ he thinks abruptly, startled by the thought. Justice is a spirit of the Fade. He is _not_ a slave to want; he does not yield to his desires. (He desires to stay in this world. He desires—not to be alone.)

When he broaches the topic at first, hesitantly, carefully, it is as nothing more than a human memory of a human conversation, a reminiscence of a companion now departed. Anders smiles; Anders agrees; the thought is not unworthy. He cannot return to the Fade now—even if he wished to, there is too much injustice here to leave. He cannot correct this injustice in a body that will not keep whole.

Later, in an instant of human panic, Justice will raise the thought again from where it lies undying, as he persists undying. Later, Justice will tell Anders that together they might rid the world of the inequity that simmers and bubbles beneath its fine gilded surface. It is right that they should do this. It is right that they use the meager tools given them for great purpose, for lofty ideal. It is right that a distasteful compromise be reached for the sake of achieving a better goal.

Later, Anders will agree.

—

**8. **

Oh, oh, oh—he has made a mistake. A terrible, unbearable mistake—he is a storm-wind whistling through the eye of a needle; he is the white torrent of frothing rapids forced between high cliffs so narrow they nearly throttle him. Kristoff had been a shell with no owner, an empty space he could not help but fill; Anders is a living mortal with a mortal's mind and a mortal's soul and _there_ _is no room for him_. He twists, turns, frantically seeking any respite, any dark corner in which he may hide himself until they might both breathe. But there is no space that is not filled, no part of Anders empty for his taking—he screams with no voice, screams again, Fade-power brilliant in Anders's soul and in his own and he reaches for it blindly, madly—

—and then, in the abrupt way of a body thudding to the ground after a great fall, it stops.

_Oh_, he has made a mistake.

There is no gap between their souls now, not with the hot flush of power drawn through them at that last moment. There is no mark of his edges and Anders's edges, no border as he learned to draw them in the earliest days of his existence. There is only space for one soul in this body, only room for a single mind, and that is all that is left of them. One mind, one soul, one body.

And this body _lives_.

It is good, he thinks in a very distant way, that he lived first in Kristoff's empty corpse, that he learned the living world through sight and sound made dim and gentle by death's veil. If he had come to this breathing body first with no warning, with no experience—he would have gone mad. He still might.

There is so much—_light_. And so much sound, and colors richer than Kristoff saw them, deeper and more vibrant than the Fade could ever hope to dream. Birdsong is louder and layered with many tones; the shirring of leather through a buckle rings clear as bells, as a hammer on steel. He can handle no more, can barely cope with what he senses now—and yet he wants it, desperately, without reason.

Vaguely, he becomes aware that Anders is cursing. No sense to it—only a long repeated trail of _shit shit shit _punctuated by short, thready gasps.

"Are you well?" he asks with Anders's mouth, with Anders's voice.

"_Shit!_" Anders cries—to Justice—to himself. "Don't—Andraste. Don't do that."

"What do you mean?"

"That! Don't do that! This is my body; this is my mouth. My voice. Don't—you won't rule me. I _won't _become an abomination."

Justice pauses, taken aback. And _insulted—_he is no demon to possess and enslave—and yet, when he considers Anders's words there is a truth there that he cannot shake. _So be it_, he thinks, in the mind that is his mind and Anders's mind at once. _Unless you need my power, I will do nothing. _

"Good," Anders says aloud. His fingers tremble and Justice examines this with interest; he sweats from his forehead and in the center of his back and Justice examines this too, enthralled by these signs of life. He had believed, once, that he had little left to learn; now there is something new to see, something new to pull apart piece by piece until he learns the workings of it. Better still, they neither of them will be alone again.

A mistake, yes. But a good one. A _right _one.

And now—he lives.

—

**9. **

For many weeks, Justice will be pleased at this struck deal. For months. For—years. He will delight in the shared knowledge and partnership that an arrangement like theirs engenders; he will rejoice at every mage freed from the oppressive, long-reaching grip of the templars. Only small things at first, one mage here, one mage there; only little victories—but he is pleased with their progress and Anders is pleased with their progress, too. He knows it. He can _feel_ it.

They move south, and west, and north again. They board a boat bound for the continent and disembark at a city named Kirkwall. It is meant only to be a resting-ground, a temporary refuge while Anders searches for a mage-friend to be freed, but there are refugees there with no food and no relief and there are many templars, and though Anders wishes to move on to the Gallows Justice suggests, gently, that they stay.

They stay.

Anders takes for their own a room in Darktown with a lamp, a guiding light for those without recourse: a sanctum, he thinks, words he has learned and ideals he approves, of healing and salvation. Here the city will not fear magic; here there will be peace, and wholeness, and no sorrow. It is a good place, Justice decides, surveying the row of beds with Anders's eyes, looking through the lens of Anders's memories at other rooms less bright, less free. It is a place where good work will be done.

Then a creature called Hawke comes with great price and great grief, because bargains struck from hope do not always preserve it, and despite Hawke's aid and Anders's distress and Justice's own quick-beating fury they all of them come too late.

Karl dies.

Justice knows Karl, or knows of him, thread-lights of Anders's memories glinting here and there with affection and old, comfort-warm passions. Every glance of candlelight down the man's cheek Anders can recall in too-perfect clarity; every swift brush of human fingers over human skin is painted too bright, too fond, raising the small hairs on the nape of his neck with human anticipation and arousal. And more than that in the deepest memories: the ones that Anders cherishes too much to mar with frequent handling, the ones he keeps wrapped tightly against his own self's rough touch, against Justice's impersonal dismemberment of his workings. It is stronger than affection and more ancient than passion, great and terrible and Justice—cannot name it.

Anders has felt less of these human passions here and Justice approves of that, but even if he did not share mind and soul with Anders, no spirit could miss the cry that bursts from him with the revelation of Karl's Tranquility; no demon could taste this perfect despair and stay unmoved. Justice surges forward, power and voice and threat alike that consumes all and spares none. When he is finished, there are only bodies. There are only dead Templars. And then, with the quick blade of a knife—Karl is dead, too.

_Yes_, Justice thinks, seething, seeping back into Anders's skin, retreating before mortal light and mortal sorrow. They will die. They will all die for this.

For Karl, he will have justice.

—

**10. **

He is changing.

He knows, when he permits himself the thought of it, that he is not what he once was. He knows that the soul-blinding fire beneath his skin burns in no spirit of the Fade, not like this; knows that his mind is a mortal's mind and his heart is a mortal's heart, and if he takes no care this fire will consume them altogether. It will twist them both, Justice and Anders, will boil them down to nothing but the shards of heart-white ingots where spirit and man should stand apart, will melt them and remake them in a forge no soul can be meant to endure. He does not know what they will be, after that happens. He does not know if he can still stop it.

He does not know if he desires to.

It is harder these days to keep his mind from Anders's, to remember the parts of him that _are _him and the parts that are not. How human of him! How _mortal_, to let the passing of time and the passing of lives alter the substance of his soul, the true and full-deep tenets of what he has chosen to be, of what he names himself. But he lives in the mortal world now, and in the heart of a mortal, and in spite of his efforts and his own knowledge of the changing he cannot arrest its progress.

Anders keeps a river of resentment behind his eyes, a reservoir's swell of old angers and older fears, and Justice cannot, _cannot_ stand unmoved and unchanged in that river for so long, cannot contain his own fury cupped in his own hands, cannot keep his own seething stream surging through his fingers to become of one piece with Anders's.

Worse, with the blending of their minds—comes the blending of their _memories_, his lush Fade-thoughts flushing like gold mist through the starker severity of Kristoff's dead mind, the whole thick of it made a maelstrom by the sharp-stoked red coals of Anders's memory lurking beneath them all, live, toothed things surging without warning to flare and scald and burn. A weakness and horrible strength at once, to be so swayed by a thought of another place, another time, to be made firm in purpose or stripped from it like a child, trembling in the face of ghosts without form or substance.

The first time Justice touches one of these memories it is without intent, an accident in the close quarters of the mind they share while he argues with Anders over their work in the city. It does not burn like glass, this warm memory of Wardens and a warmer campfire; it does not collapse into itself like an iridescent film pierced by needles. Instead it only—dims, and fades, less bright and less strong than it was before.

And Anders strengthens instead. His purpose firms, his wavering lessens—and his hesitation fades away.

Justice feels it, the change—cannot _help _but feel it with their minds and memories so twined, and after that he does not hesitate again. The weak places in Anders, the bruising thoughts that make him too tender, too _reticent_—one by one Justice touches each of them, pulls thin shadows over them like black cloth to keep these dangerous things apart from their purpose. His purpose. _Their _purpose.

He will have justice. No human softness, no human mercy will keep him from it.

His anger grows. His frustration grows. Anders feels it too, he can tell: hours spent feverishly bending with crooked back over sheaves of paper, days and months spent speaking with or shouting at anyone who will listen. (Few will. Fewer than who should, and though Justice will not name the feeling he knows that this enrages him.) And so they feed each other, and feed off each other, a beast blindly devouring its own tail to ease the maddening hollow of starvation.

But it does not matter, he thinks one night, surveying in silence the place where Anders lies asleep on his worn, scarred desk in the clinic, looking with dispassionate eyes at the human's worn, scarred cheek. He wondered once if Anders dreamed with him kept so close in his mind; now, he cares only that Anders dreams of purpose. Of justice, of templars routed and the Gallows razed and the mages imprisoned there made free.

Sacrifices must be made in the name of change.

Oh, but he is not unfair to Anders and the burden he carries; he is not without his own suffering, his own denial for greater goals. The human Hawke takes them into the Fade for a boy's dreams, for the sake of a child who cannot yet shape his magic. It is _electric_, the Fade, his _home_, gold fog and wisping mists twisting around him as if to curl him from his host, as if to say: _you have returned at last. _But this world and the shape of it are only dreams, soft and imperfect, and no matter the form he might give to it he knows it will not stay.

And so _he _does not stay.

And so he steps with eyes open into the river-running resentment that lives in Anders, that lives in _him_, now, and he does not fight it again. Resentment, and hate, and grief and sorrow and _rage—_he will take them all, folding them into his borders that are no longer stone but wind, ephemeral, ever-changing and ever-whittling at the rampart of Anders's mind. There must be change. In this mortal world, there must be mortal change. He will bring justice to them.

And if they will not have justice, then he will bring Vengeance instead.

—

**11.**

Sela petrae, he whispers. Drakestone, he whispers.

Change will not come without cost. Without great cost.

—

**12. **

They have done it. They have _done it_, together, and there will be _more_—and more, and more, until every templar in this world is destroyed and every Circle broken. He cannot have enough. Will never.

He does not care what Anders thinks—does not care what Hawke thinks. There is only the glorious irrevocable tipping of the scale, only the sheer unadulterated headiness of knowing these humans to be shaken loose at last from their comfortable moorings. There will be more. There will be so much _more_—

Hawke speaks. Justice turns his attention unwillingly, caught in victory, caught in death—but then there is a knife, sudden and small and very sharp, and he finds himself—surprised. And surprised again when it slides between Anders's ribs, because there is little resistance from his human skin and so much—_agony, _disproportionate to the wound. He did not understand this mortal fear of death before, did not comprehend the fierce wild horror of pain and darkness and a bare and absolute ending to one's being.

The world grows dim through Anders's eyes, the way the memories he touched dimmed, the way Kristoff's body dimmed, the way the Fade dimmed a lifetime ago when he left it. Abruptly memory stirs, soft and softer with age: Nathaniel, and Velanna, and Sigrun and Oghren, standing with him and with Anders, smiling, a pearl-rare moment of peace among people so little given to it. They would not have approved, he thinks, startled, appalled by the epiphany. They, who called him friend, would not have cherished this thing he has changed into, the bodies he has strewn in his wake.

Does he?

Surely he does, he thinks, anxious, staring at a clawed, gauntleted hand he recognizes as his own and does not recognize. He blinks, stares, blinks again, a human habit born from human concern, and like a stream seeping slow and steady through the earth he becomes aware of his shared heart slowing, his shared blood running hot and thick from the open wounded place between his ribs. Their breathing slows. Stops.

And Anders—smiles_. _

Ah. The thoughts come slow, disconnected from each other, dropping one by one to ripple the surface of the dwindling pool he stands in. Anders, he realizes, understanding at last, at _last_—is at peace. It has been so long since he has seen it that he did not know it for what it was.

He would like to be at peace.

Distantly, there is a light.

It shines—gold—


End file.
