Chapter Text
The transformation had been brutal to behold. Bones doing things they shouldn't, flesh reshaping with a sickening ease. The templars fighting them had panicked, attacking with renewed vigour, but you couldn't smite a monster. Anders didn't think he'd ever forget what Hawke had done to them - the way his clawed hands had ripped through silverite like nothing, the way his yellow fangs had sunk into the face of the man who had tried to surrender. The screams, interspersed with the hulking creature that had been Hawke howling, wild glee.
Isabela had already booked it, but Anders couldn't stop staring as the beast turned toward them, blood tacky and thick across its muzzle. Its eyes glowed in the reflection of their lanterns, a muddy sort of greenish yellow. The brute was breathing heavily, its massive chest rising and falling, and in one huge paw it held a severed arm by the wrist. It looked like Hunger, and danger. "Blondie!" Varric's voice was a hiss. "Step back! He's - this isn't Hawke!"
Anders eyed the beast carefully. Its jaws lolled open, wet red tongue hanging out. It was staring at him, and only at him, like the rest of the world didn't matter, and he knew then that Varric was wrong. "It's alright," he said to the werewolf, "They're gone."
"Anders!" Isabela's voice was sharp, but she was too far away. All of them were too far away.
The beast's eyes snapped over his shoulder and its muzzle wrinkled as it snarled - at her, at Varric, at the others - and Anders carefully shook his wrist out of Varric's grip and stepped forward. Six feet between him and the werewolf that had once been Hawke. He could hear his friends' voices raised in alarm behind him but he didn't care. He knew from watching it work it could close that gap in an eyeblink, but he wasn't scared. For the first time, he found himself reaching for that other side of him that may or may not be Justice - not because he was in danger, not because he needed the mana, but because he wanted the Hawke-wolf to see it, and as the rents opened up in his skin, spilling fire rather than blood, he knew it had been the right choice.
The fur on Hawke's jaw was coarse and tacky with blood. He smelled like dog, too, but for once in his life, Anders didn't mind. He could see his own reflection in Hawke's animal eyes, twin pools of blue fire where his own should be, and when he leaned up the werewolf leaned down and they met in the middle, forehead to forehead. The wolf's breath stank of carrion, and was hot on his throat, his collarbones. He placed his palms on that huge broad chest - shaped the outline of muscles nothing like a man's, traced his fingertips over ribs that simply didn't exist in a human being - and when Hawke inhaled he did, too, matching their breathing rhythm for rhythm.
The templar arm landed at their side with a clang of metal. The wolf's huge paws came up, clasped onto his much smaller shoulders, the tips of his claws sinking through Anders' pauldrons to rest against his skin, pinpricks. The flesh of Hawke's chest under Anders' palms rippled, but Anders didn't let go as the change started - as horrific in reverse, the sounds all the worse up close. He kept his eyes locked on Hawke's, watching as the pupils changed in the lamplight, Hawke's face doing something complicated and horrible as his snout became a nose, jaws grinding and teeth splintering, and when it had finished - when Hawke stood before him, naked and shivering, smeared still with clotted strings of other men's blood - he reached forward and kissed him, gently, right where his jaw sloped into his ear. He himself was still burning, and his skin cast a blueish glow across Hawke's, and behind him Varric was swearing inventively but it didn't matter.
"Hello, love," he said, reaching up and tracing the greying hairs at Hawke's temple. "Thank you for saving us." Hawke's face contained multitudes - surprise and gratitude and uncertainty. Anders didn't know how long he'd been keeping this secret, but it didn't matter. He understood. He felt as though he'd been given the keys to the greatest treasure in the world, and tried to put something of that on his own face - the love he felt, the security, the relief. Hawke had torn apart a squadron of armed men for him.
And as Anders leaned forward to kiss him, he knew he would do the same in return.