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It's not that the world goes gray, after Justice – the colours just dull. He dulls, blurs. It's an adjustment, like breathing underwater, preparing to drown and making your peace.
He changes, but doesn't. He should have died, but didn't. He's alone, but isn't.
There's a static in his head now, and he knows not all of his thoughts are his own.
It's a strange feeling; not quite talking to the presence in his mind, but arguing with it, trying to differentiate between what it does and wants, and what he does.
Justice is a spirit.
He is a mage.
He goes to Kirkwall, he goes to Karl.
It feels heavy, the weight of Justice. The single-minded push towards what he knows is right.
Freedom for mages.
A mage, at least, for now.
His mind should be consumed by the love and fear he feels for the man who made him want to stay, but there are cracks everywhere.
They separate; his thoughts, his feelings, his goals. They separate and mix together, and he tries to make sense of it all, but sometimes it's easier to press on and leave it all be.
Sometimes he tastes blood. He sees flashes of a templar disintegrating; molten metal pouring out of his own chest; the sudden feeling of crowded in his head, the silence after.
Magic, his.
Blood, theirs.
A spirit.
He buries it in the resonant hum and underwater echoes of his new purpose.
He's better than that, than them. Has to be.
Karl dies anyway.
Justice booms in anger, shakes inside his head, his body. He feels the rage as thunder in his fingertips, a hot wound against his sternum. He can’t remember how to cry.
There are better days; days when he is in control. He's chatty, he's quick and he's sharp. He's fun, and he's irritating. It's familiar, and he feels like he used to, only a year earlier.
He thinks back on the whirlwind of an apostate who spent his days bantering with their little group of outcast Wardens, joking and flirting. He remembers how much Nathaniel loathed his cheap puns, how Velanna turned him down so many times it became routine. How Oghren was awful, and Sigrun was a delight. How Justice had a voice, and spoke in words.
He was happy, he thinks. Or at least so invested in making others feel and react and reassure, because every grin and groan and chuckle told him he was there.
He was there.
He’s in the Deep Roads again, and he feels the weight of responsibility. He was here before. He was made for this place, its ancient magic. He was always going to end up here, again and again, until it was the last time.
The cavernous halls hide so much he doesn’t understand, even if everything in him hums, like a memory, like waves of sound bouncing off stalagmite. He doesn’t understand, he does.
It’s becoming both easier and not to tell which parts of him are still his – most of them, he hopes.
Hawke loses her sister to the Circle.
He shouldn’t feel guilty.
There are sick to heal. There are mages to spirit away. There is work to do.
He feeds the cats in Darktown, and it’s the most human he’s felt in months. A familiar warmth still blossoms in his chest when a tabby bumps her head against the back of his hand, or weaves around his leg, tail twirling and twitching. This is his, his alone. He’s here, all him.
He scratches a kitten under the chin and can feel the smile in his cheeks, the corners of his eyes.
All him.
“Is Anders there? Can I speak to Anders?”
Isabela knew him before, if only briefly. It’s why the teasing hurts the most.
“I just wanted to make sure it was you.”
It hurts a little less.
“Is it one of your moods?”
“You seem very angry.”
“You’re no fun anymore.”
The mages don’t want to be saved. Blood magic is an epidemic, borne of despair, anger and grief. Kirkwall is at a boiling point, threatening to burst at the slightest provocation. Templars have lost control. The Circle has lost control.
He lies to make sure Hawke helps him.
To separate him and Justice, for good – as though anything short of decapitation could do it.
“What have you done?”
A building collapses in an explosion of magic.
It doesn’t stop anything, it doesn’t solve anything, won’t solve anything.
More mages die.
But so do more templars, and civilians.
It can’t be stopped, but he’s started something new.
It feels too easy to leave.
He arrived in Kirkwall on a boat with refugees, all those years ago.
He leaves on one, now, staff discarded, a hood drawn tight over his head.
On the other side of it, he walks.
He watches Kirkwall burn down in the distance, the embers matching the slow, silent sunrise of a new life.
He changes, but doesn't.
He should have died, but didn't.
He's not alone, but is.