"Seems a little late for that," Hawke finally, sardonically voices the underpinning of his cascading thoughts for this entire conversation. He doesn't mean the last ten years, when there were abundant opportunities to tell Anders sorry, but it was just too much work, or he couldn't be with a man who'd started a war, or any dozen other smaller or larger reasons Anders would have accepted as inevitable. What he means, whether or not it's clear in all six of those words, is here, the real world, comprised the cleanest break he could possibly have made and yet here he is anyway.

He draws a thumb over one of those pinched brows, light, but still an attempt to to smooth it out despite the lack of pressure. (Oh look it's a metaphor.) "The world won't stop spinning if you let yourself be happy for twenty seconds, you know. Even if you don't think you deserve it."