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It had taken years for Anders and Fenris to find a place where they had some accord between them. It had taken longer still for them to acknowledge commonality and attraction.
They had never acknowledged trust and certainly not love, but care...
Care enough to rend Fenris’ heart with a blast of scarlet light. Care enough to shatter whatever fragile trust had grown between them despite all their differences.
Care enough that Fenris felt personally betrayed by his sometime-lover.
“You lied to me!” He clutched Anders by his damned black coat front and lifted him onto his toes. “You made me believe that perhaps mages were not all deceitful.”
He shook Anders and snarled when the man did not resist, moving limply in his grasp. “Are you listening to me?”
Anders’ response was dull, subdued. He sounded nothing like the man Fenris had come to know. “I’m listening.”
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
Isabela sucked in a breath to give her opinion, but Hawke silenced her with a hand on her arm. They were on the run, soon to be vilified by half the continent, held up as heroes by the other half. It wasn’t entirely because of Anders’ choice - they could have repudiated him - but he had used them all, not least of all Fenris.
Everyone in their camp was silent, watching the scene between Anders and Fenris. They were exhausted, bloodied, stinking of sweat and blood, fear and dark magic, but Fenris’ question resonated among all the men and women who had helped Anders find his sela petrae and risked their lives for his drakestone.
Anders shook his head slowly, as though it were too heavy to move quickly. “I’m ready to die. I’ve been ready to die since I made my choice.”
“Your choice?” Fenris lifted him entirely off the ground before throwing him down at his feet. “Without thinking of our choices!”
Aveline nodded, as did Carver. Varric sighed and settled on a fallen log to watch. Merrill moved closer to Hawke until he draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side while Isabela folded her arms to watch, her body language almost too casual.
Anders pushed himself to his hands and knees and craned his head up at Fenris. “Your choice would have been the status quo, Aveline’s too. Hawke’s is always moderation. Merrill cares about elves, not mages. Isabela cares about Isabela. Varric cares about the story. And Carver is a templar.” He spat the last word out and pushed himself to his feet.
“I’m not sorry.” He held his hands open at his sides. “And I deserve....” He looked around at his watching friends before turning his attention to Fenris, saying in a broken whisper, “...justice.”
The group tensed like a single organism while Fenris’ lyrium brands lit with fire before he grabbed Anders once again. “You will have it.”
He held Anders close enough to kiss, skin alight with power before he released him. The glow in his brands flickered out and his companions released their breaths together.
“Get away from me.”
Fenris didn’t wake Varric for his watch later in the night.
When the first light of dawn roused Carver, he woke the others to see that Fenris and Anders and all of their possessions were gone.
They searched, but the pair had left no tracks, no trace, no indication of where they were going.
“I let you drag me away in the night,” Anders said when Fenris allowed him to stop for water and a piss at mid-day. “Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?”
Fenris emerged from behind a bush and took the water skin from Anders without asking. “No.”
He tipped his head back and drank until the skin ran dry before he casually tossed it aside. “You’ve had enough rest.”
Anders got up to retrieve the skin, but Fenris stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Leave it.”
He left the water skin.
They walked through the day, twice moving into the cover of brush or boulders to avoid being seen by armed riders. When they stopped, Fenris ate and drank with little apparent care for conserving their resources.
They spoke little, only terse instructions from Fenris and equally terse acknowledgment from Anders.
The tension between them left both with jaws clenched and brows furrowed.
In the evening Fenris chose their campsite well away from the road and refused to allow a fire. Anders found a hollow to curl into with his bedroll, turning his back to Fenris without trying to initiate any conversation.
What words would make any difference between them at this point?
In the night when Anders woke to Fenris’ hand over his mouth to stifle his screams, he knew at last where Fenris was taking him.
His dreams should have been of the innocents he and Vengeance had murdered. His dreams had been haunted by them every night since he had planted the bomb, he had expected they would only get worse once the act was seen through to bloody fruition.
Instead he had dreamed of darkspawn.
Anders swallowed the last scream and pushed Fenris’ hand away.
“You’re taking me to the Deep Roads.”
For a moment he felt Fenris’ lips on his shoulder before the elf left him where he lay and returned to his own bedroll.
“We leave at dawn.”
The Deep Roads entrance stood much as it had when Anders and Fenris had last accompanied Hawke on his search for Nathaniel Howe.
A muscle jumped in Anders’ jaw as he stared at the great black opening. His pulse throbbed in his throat so hard that Fenris could see every rapid beat.
“Right,” he said softly, contemplatively. “I guess this is right. For me and for Justice.”
He didn’t turn his eyes away from the entrance as he murmured, “I lied.”
Fenris snorted derisively. “I know.”
Anders shook his head. “No. I lied when I said I wasn’t sorry. I’m just...” He tore his attention away to meet Fenris’ eyes. “I’m sorry that I was selfish. I knew what was between us would end badly, and I did it anyway.”
His eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “I’m sorry for that. For what it’s worth... I’m grateful for this. It’s... right.”
Fenris’ expression gave back nothing. He held Anders’ eyes without blinking, without moving. Were it not for the clench and unclench of his jaw, he would have been as impassive as any statue.
“I guess this is goodbye.” Anders reached back to loosen the bindings that held his staff on his back, letting it fall into his hand before he broke from Fenris’ stare and strode into the darkness.
Fenris watched until he could no longer distinguish the mage’s form in the shadows before he let himself sink to the ground and bury his face in his hands.
“Goodbye.”